Daniel Johnson
Serious Business
The considered high-mindedness of Eliot or Larkin is no longer a prerequisite for members of today’s literary establishment
The Frau is for Turning
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel at first dismissed, then embraced Thilo Sarrazin’s attack on multiculturalism
Liberate the Universities
The state has subordinated intellectual purposes and diminished the freedom and independence that were once the hallmark of academic life.
The German Question
The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution and the Twentieth Century by Peter Watson; Fame by Daniel Kehlmann; The Box by Günter Grass; and Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius
The Politics of Envy
That Howard Jacobson and V. S. Naipaul are non-members of the London literary establishment does them credit
The Voice of Conscience
‘Benedict reminds us that reason without faith will also take pathological forms, whether totalitarian ideology or eugenics’
Ralph Miliband
A tale of two émigrés: One of whom wanted to subvert the British State, while the other embraced it
Ernest Gellner
A tale of two émigrés: One of whom wanted to subvert the British State, while the other embraced it
Why the World Needs a Younger Winston
Seventy years after the Battle of Britain, we again face the threat of a new Dark Age. Can our leaders emulate Churchill’s finest hour?
Come Back, Trollope
Westminster’s current inhabitants are perfect fodder for a great political satirist, if only we had one
Why Remoaners should back Boris
“Boris, ironically, now offers Remoaners the best chance of a soft Brexit, or at least a sensible one. And to those who want a second referendum—’the people’s vote’—there may even be a chance of that too.”
On the road
“In the summer of 1980, in the grip of some Kerouac-ish fantasy, I opted to hitch-hike from Laredo to New York”
Discovering the Great War of China
A third of a million Chinese labourers helped the Allies defeat the Kaiser, but their huge unsung contribution ended in betrayal