North America

Politicians sat on their hands as the mighty American economy was sent to its doom. What is to be done to prevent a repeat?

William Kristol, founder-editor of the leading American conservative magazine, the Weekly Standard, and Tim Montgomerie, founder-editor of the ConservativeHome website, discuss the similar problems facing the US and Britain with Standpoint Editor Daniel Johnson

Neither David Cameron nor Barack Obama is interested in foreign affairs. This bodes ill for what’s left of the special relationship

The heir to Buckley, Kristol and Neuhaus, Robert George is the new leader of American intellectual conservatism

‘American academia is being swamped by the backwaters of identity politics’

The administration is in deep trouble on healthcare and national security

‘I look around the dimly-lit bar and notice how the hard-drinking clientele watches suspicious newcomers like me, with my British-tainted accent and far too many questions. I ask another one: “Do the Hell’s Angels come here, Brian?” Bingo.’

The American Civil War: A Military History by John Keegan

‘In the 1950s, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene wrote triumphalist Catholic novels with miracles as part of the story — Brideshead Revisited, The End of the Affair. They were bestsellers. Since Vatican II, however, the tenor of Catholic fiction has been doubt, dissent and disillusion.’