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“... visions and conceptions still permeate many aspects of European thought and institutions. They may be discerned in the emphasis on social science as the supreme guide to public policy, on the ‘priestly’ role of technical, medical and managerial ‘experts’, on human welfare as the sole touchstone of ethical life, on ‘law’ as a set of disembodied ...”

“... The​ plan to ‘off-shore’ asylum seekers to Rwanda was the last straw. In May 2023, I resigned as a (part-time) immigration judge after twenty years in the job. It was less a matter of conscience, more of recognition that the role had become irrevocably tainted by the politics of asylum. For years, people coming to the UK for respite from horrors in their home countries had faced increasingly oppressive measures and an ever more hostile environment, and the judicial end of the immigration and asylum system, it seemed to me, was becoming part of the stage business in a theatre of cruelty ...”

“... to be found, even among the most liberal-minded, sophisticated and liberated people. Homosexuality may be the one subject left in America about which there is no official hypocrisy … Cursed without clear cause, afflicted without apparent cure, they are an affront to our rationality, living evidence of our despair of ever finding a sensible, an explainable ...”

“... enthusiasm, ending in a wild ovation – for whom? For Grenfell or for Lipman? Some of them may not have been quite sure. This element of doubt in their delight is typical of that teasing ambiguity which has always been inherent in the act of theatre-going – an ambiguity exploited to fullest effect by the art of Barry Humphries. Perhaps because I have ...”

“... not perversely to butcher Coleridge’s rhythm (‘A sadder and a wiser man’), and the mangling may just be Brett’s work. (A.E. Housman to his publisher Grant Richards with the fifth edition of A Shropshire Lad: ‘I enclose a copy of our joint work. The results of your collaboration are noted on pages 4, 22, 45, 55, 71, 77, 78, 92, 116.’) Then there is ...”

“... of this highly enjoyable book, Harvey’s sense of irony does not seem to have deserted him: there may perhaps be a use for it at All Souls College, Oxford, where this poet is now a fellow. He acknowledges that, while privileged young Westerners like himself are embracing Eastern values, there is a corresponding shift in the other direction, as young ...”

“... Sloane Ranger style, Peter York has told us, reflects ‘a state of mind that’s eternal’. This may be putting it a bit strongly: but the Sloane ancestry goes back at least to the days when knighthood was in flower and one really needed a pony. Like British trade unions, Sloanes have deep roots as a defensively-organised collective, and ‘What Really ...”

“... to carry home and stick under a short harmonium leg. Many of them, of course, will read it, which may also explain why the Sellers type face is larger: the text may be read through tears, undistorted. I know this, because I have tried it, and the fact that my own tears sprang from other sources than grief in no way ...”

“... and education are rather matters which are crucially affected by the philosophical positions we may adopt on other topics such as the nature of knowledge, morality and beauty. If we want to understand what can or should be taught to whom, and by whom this should be done, we need to understand what can and should be learnt, and by whom, and under what ...”

“... books on manners tried to refine the practices of bed-sharing, spitting and blowing the nose (one may read about the ‘sociogenesis’ and ‘psychogenesis’ of these teachings in Norbert Elias’s The Civilising Process, and doubtless elsewhere). Two centuries ago, when John Debrett became a miscellaneous publisher, his contemporary advice-givers had moved ...”

“... son be afraid of the hackneyed phrase,’ he advises the proud mama of a budding author: ‘it may very well be the most suitable.’ He tends to harp like a schoolmaster on the theme that the necessary end of culture is ‘right living’, that the final test of a work of art is its moral value. We learn, too, that the purpose of all art is to please, and ...”

“... of measures to restrict public protest. The House of Lords has thrown out some of them, but that may prove only a temporary reprieve if the Tories continue to need ‘red meat’ to feed their supporters. The second is the criminalisation of ‘unauthorised encampments’, tacitly aimed at Travellers and Roma. The House of Lords voted in favour of the harsh ...”

“... Gormenghast than anything evoking perfect symmetry. Is there something wrong with our narrator? It may be only that there was something wrong with the set designer, but the effect is wonderful, and it goes with the tone of the voice, if not with what the voice is saying. Lateish in the film Laurence Olivier, as Maxim de Winter, who has married the ...”

“... much time worrying about. Recent examples such as US student loans or the Chinese property bubble may well be on your mind if you’ve just graduated from Tufts or bought a flat in Shenzhen, but otherwise they’re probably not keeping you awake at night. The condition of the Eurozone, and of the European Union more generally, was once on the list in a way we ...”