Skip to content

Index: Politics & Culture

• Is Britain’s civic life flourishing in villages, but dying in cities?

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Having lived in the capital since birth, village life was alien to McCabe. “I found the community down there to be really special, especially coming from London, where I don’t even know my neighbours.”

Also filed in Art & Architecture, Chronicle & Notices | | Comments (0)

• Hard questions for a flawed welfare state.

Thursday, 28 July 2011

In hard times, as in war, questions arise that were once considered taboo. As we approach $15 trillion run up in aggregate national debt, and confront the reality of a welfare state that is predicated on flawed assumptions about everything from demography to human nature, a rendezvous with brutal reality is now upon us.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices | | Comments (0)

· Otto von Habsburg: The grand old order knocks on heaven’s door.

Saturday, 16 July 2011

In the cool, dry air of a Vienna crypt, Austria will today agree an uneasy truce with the late Otto von Habsburg, the man who would be kaiser.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, History & Travel | | Comments (1)

· To paraphrase Dr Johnson: ‘Thinking and emergency action are deeply compatible.’

Friday, 15 July 2011

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices | | Comments (0)

• After the Bastille: ‘Vendée, du génocide au mémoricide’.

Thursday, 14 July 2011

While many of our countrymen are celebrating July 14 and observing the traditional celebrations of the French Revolution, this is a book that should cause renewed controversy, 25 years after the publication of A French Genocide: The Vendee (by the same author).

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, History & Travel | | Comments (0)

• In Syria: ‘The Protocols’ are somewhere in Rifaat Eid’s drawers.

Thursday, 14 July 2011

‘Have you read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?’ he asked me. ‘It’s very good, I’ll find you a copy.’ He started to rummage around in his drawers, muttering something about how, a century ago, it had had the foresight to predict war in underground tunnels.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, History & Travel, Noted elsewhere | | Comments (0)

· What would Wikileaks do with a murdered schoolgirl’s personal messages?

Wednesday, 6 July 2011

Newspapers that denounce the Murdoch press for phone hacking happily sign exclusive deals to disseminate Wikileaks’ stolen documents on world affairs or to print details of MPs expenses that were obtained by theft.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, The press | | Comments (0)

· America’s civil rights movement as a gospel revival.

Wednesday, 6 July 2011

America is also the most racially egalitarian society in human history. Most Americans don’t recognize this because Americans, being the cultural children of Calvinism, are very good at self-flagellation. Compare the United States today with Europe and Latin America, however.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Noted elsewhere | | Comments (0)

· The ‘gentle law’ of the Old Glory code.

Monday, 4 July 2011

In 2007, here in Asheville, North Carolina, two flag-related incidents received a lot of press and public attention.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices | | Comments (0)

Historicism and the great beast.

Monday, 27 June 2011

Anthony O’Hear: We should consider whether the extreme unpredictability of the crowds we are seeing to-day in quite a number of places (including even London, as it happens) is not just an extreme illustration of what is actually always the case. Beneath its apparently smooth surface and underpinning the leaders who appear to shape it, human history is built on shifting sands, on countless inherently unstable actions and decisions of millions of individual people.

Also filed in Notes & Comment, Principal Articles | Tagged | Comments (1)

· If it weren’t for the euro, the euro-zone would be in good shape.

Tuesday, 21 June 2011

Those in responsible positions are getting bogged down in crisis management, as they seek to placate the public and sugarcoat the problems. They say that there is only a government debt crisis in a few euro countries but no euro crisis, citing as evidence the fact that the value of the European common currency has remained relatively stable against other currencies like the dollar.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Economics and Finance, Noted elsewhere | | Comments (0)

· Bummed out by Skid Row research.

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Just as in New York, it was a culture of lawlessness that had been tolerated for decades. If any of these researchers had bothered to go into the streets, they would have seen that.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Noted elsewhere | | Comments (0)

· It’s no secret that we’ve lost the will to guard our privacy.

Thursday, 2 June 2011

In our days, it is not so much the possibility of betrayal or violation of privacy that frightens us, but its opposite: shutting down the exits.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Noted elsewhere | | Comments (0)

· Those were the days, when prostitutes dreamed of the presidency and preachers pushed abortions.

Monday, 30 May 2011

Victoria Woodhull was quite a gal. Having once been an actress and prostitute in Gold Rush San Francisco, she moved on to New York and was ‘reborn’, becoming the first female broker on Wall Street, then founding her very own newspaper to promote her political dream – which was to stand for the presidency in 1872, fighting under the banner of suffrage, free love and equal rights for all.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, History & Travel, Noted elsewhere | | Comments (1)

President Obama’s ‘special relationships’ – wherever he may roam.

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

President Obama: “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.”

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Noted elsewhere | | Comments (0)
The Fortnightly Review