Category Archives: Politics
Jeevan Vasagar – The Surge – The Race Against the Most Destructive Force in Nature
The one with the comedy dog The Surge is a trenchant analysis of the destructive power of water, a clarion call for recognising imminent dangers, and a panoramic narrative of human catastrophe and hubris. Some passages present as a cross … Continue reading
Dr Geoff Andrews – Radicals: The Working Classes and the Making of Modern Britain
Whither the Labour movement? One is struck by the heroic energy and fortitude of the working classes – working long and arduous hours, they found time and resources to educate themselves, to organise trades unions, to make brass bands and … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, Economics, History, Politics
Tagged Andrews, Books, Communism, Geoff, Haigh, Radicals, Tim, Working Class
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Alwyn Turner – A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars
Don’t mention the war! Alwyn Turner is our finest cultural and social historian. His focus is typically on the lived experience of the people, rather than the Sunday papers’ idea of culture or the minutiae of the Westminster Village. He … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, Economics, History, Politics
Tagged Alwyn, BritIN, Nation, ShellShocked, Turner
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Steve Richards – Tony Blair: The Prime Minsters Series
He was not arrogant enough! Tony Blair is one of the defining politicians of post-war Britain, but he failed to transform the country on the same scale as, say, Margaret Thatcher. For his enemies he was a warmonger and a … Continue reading
Simon Hart – Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip
Strap in, this is going to be quite a ride! 31 October 2023. “Amongst today’s HR joys is the report from Emma that a departmental SpAd (Special Adviser) went to an orgy over the weekend and ended up taking a … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, History, Humour, Politics
Tagged Hancock, Hart, Simon, Ungvernable
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Jerry Brotton – Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction
Where are we?!? Why deep South but far North? Why do some maps orient East or South, but never West? When did direction change from being where things came from to where we were going? Is the North Pole a … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, History, Philosophy, Politics, Science
Tagged Books, Hiagh, Podcast, science, Tim
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Alwyn Turner – Little Englanders – Britain in the Edwardian Era
End of Empire History sometimes provides us with neat dividing lines. Queen Victoria helpfully died just weeks into the new century, making way for a new era, but the nightmarish Twentieth Century didn’t really get into its stride until the … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, History, Humour, Politics
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Cathi Unsworth – Season Of The Witch: The Book Of Goth
Margaret Thatcher and Goth Culture It was the Age of Thatcher, and beyond the playgrounds of the red-braces wide boys and the Sloane Square privileged, it was grim. Unemployment was a weapon in the class war. The Yorkshire Ripper ran … Continue reading
Steve Richards – The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success And Failure From Butler to Corbyn
Steve Richards – Atlantic Books – £10.99 Steve Richards’ last book was an entertaining and penetrating discussion of the last ten Prime Ministers (or at any rate, the last ten at the time of publication – we’ve had a couple … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, Economics, History, Politics
Tagged Prime Minister, Richards, Steve, The
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Nick Wallis – The Great Post Office Scandal: The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster which put innocent people in jail
Nick Wallis – Bath Publishing – £25 It is the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. Hundreds of innocent people prosecuted, ruined, often imprisoned – their lives destroyed. And hundreds more dismissed from their jobs and their livelihoods, … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, Economics, History, Politics
Tagged Books, Hiagh, Jail, Nick, Podcast, Post Office, postoffice, Scandal, Tim, Wallace
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Nicholas Wapshott – Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market
Nicholas Wapshott – W. w. Norton – £22.95 Not many academic economists are household names. But when I was young, Milton Friedman was. The high-priest of Monetarism and intellectual descendant of Friedrich Hayek, his theories were much admired by right-wing … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, Economics, History, Politics
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Robb Johnson – The People’s Republic of Neverland: The Child Versus The State
Robb Johnson – PM Books – £17.99 https://media.blubrry.com/timhaighreadsbooks/bookspodcast.com/MP3s/green-shoot_robbjohnson-thepeoplesrepublicofneverland_20210811.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Posted in Cultural History, Politics
Tagged child, children, education, Johnson, Robb, school
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Philip Seargeant – The Art of Political Storytelling
This is the story of one man’s mission to save the world from the forces of evil. To do battle against a corrupt and self-serving enemy bent on enslaving an innocent population. In order to achieve this, he has to … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, Politics
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Helen Lewis – Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights
Helen Lewis – Jonathan Cape £13.59 Well-behaved women don’t make history, and we need to be a bit grown up about our approach to feminism. That is the starting point of the new book from Helen Lewis. Lewis is a … Continue reading
Steve Richards – The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May
Steve Richards – Atlantic Books £20 You have to wonder why the office of Prime Minister is so coveted. While many politicians aspire to Number Ten, more or less all the Prime Ministers in this book spent at least some … Continue reading
Graeme Garrard – How To Think Politically
Professor James Bernard Murphy and Graeme Garrard – Bloomsbury: £10.49 In an overview of the great political thinkers of the ages, comprising thirty of the most trenchant minds in history, you would imagine that there would be room for the … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, History, Philosophy, Politics
Tagged Engels, Garrard, Ghandi, Graeme, Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Mao Tze Tung, Marx, Plato, politically, politics, think, thinking
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Ben Burgis – Give Them An Argument: Logic For The Left
What is the purpose of debate? Is it to convince somebody, somewhere of something, or is it merely to undermine the other side and bolster your own prejudices? You may have noticed that political discourse is not always conducted in … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
Tagged argument, ben shapiro, debate, jewish, left wing, political, politics, right wing
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Robert Kuttner – Can Democracy Survive Globalisation?
John Maynard Keynes said, “Above all, let finance be primarily national.” Keynes understood the dangers of unfettered finance, and if he’d had his way the Bretton Woods system of international controls would have been still stronger. In his new book, … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, Economics, History, Politics
Tagged Brexit, Democracy, Euarope, Globalisation, Grexit, politics, Trump
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Steve Richards – The Rise of the Outsiders: How Mainstream Politics Lost its Way
Steve Richards has presented a series of half hour broadcasts for the BBC about British prime ministers, which he delivers as live and without a script or even notes. They are brilliantly insightful, and wonderfully fluent. With characteristic modesty, Steve says … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, Politics
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Jamie Cawley – Beliefs And The World They Created
It goes without saying that there is a difference in kind between what you “believe” and what I “know to be true”. Whether it is the True Religion (be it Judaism, Christianity or Islam), Dawkinsite scientific certainty or the Demonstrable Facts of … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, Economics, History, Politics, Religion
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Mike Jay – High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture
Our noble species has a fraught relationship with intoxicants, narcotics, stimulants and hallucinogens. We crave their mind-altering powers, but once they become woven into the fabric of our cultures, we have to either come to terms with them, or make … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, History, Politics, Religion, Science
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Nicholas Wapshott – The Sphinx – Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II
Senator Burton K Wheeler put the question best: If the war in Europe was America’s war, why was she not fighting it? It was the vital question of its day. Should America join the European war or not? There are … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, History, Politics
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Alwyn W turner – The Last Post
No Man’s Land is already littered with books on the Great War, and there will be many more hurled into the fray, but not many of them will be as original as this thoughtful and engaging treatment by the historian … Continue reading
Humaira Shahid – Devotion and Defiance
Humaira Shahid might have had a gilded life, and no-one would have blamed her. She was born into the privileged classes of Pakistan, enjoyed a happy and liberal childhood, and married well into a newspaper dynasty. The important men in … Continue reading
Gore Vidal from the archive – Palimpsest
After half a century as a great novelist and America’s finest essayist, in 1995 Gore Vidal got round to writing… well, not an autobiography, but at any rate a memoir. Why a memoir? Gore told Tim that by the age … Continue reading
Posted in Archive, Biography, Cultural History, Politics
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Alwyn W Turner – Things Can Only Get Bitter
The writer Alwyn Turner has spotted a fascinating statistical anomaly and it is this: the generation to which he belongs has produced significantly fewer front rank politicians than those either side of it. Or indeed any generation within living memory. … Continue reading
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Nicholas Wapshott – Keynes Hayek – The Clash That Defined Modern Economics
Can government action fix a broken economy? Eighty years ago John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek arrived at diametrically opposed conclusions. Far from being a dry and technical academic argument, it was then and is now the central division within … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, Economics, History, Politics
Tagged Economics
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Chris Mullin – A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994-1999
Political diaries can be turgid and self-serving or they can be witty and revealing. Chris Mullins diaries are firmly in the second category. The final volume, A Walk-On Part, is brilliantly insightful, satisfyingly indiscreet, tender and tough, and marvellously resonant … Continue reading
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Steve Richards – Whatever It Takes
When the dust settles we will observe that more books have been written about New Labour than about any other British administration, yes, including Mrs Thatcher’s febrile season in the sun. But let the Peter Mandelsons and the Alistair Campbells … Continue reading
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Alwyn Turner – Crisis, What Crisis – Britain in the 1970s
Britain in the 1970’s is revisited in vivid technicolour by Alwyn Turner in his new book, “Crisis, What Crisis?”. Tim Haigh visited Alwyn at home to discuss the politics, the cultural upheavals, the t.v and the pop music of the … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, History, Politics
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Lord David Owen – In Sickness And In Power – illness in heads of government during the last 100 years
Tim Haigh visited Lord David Owen, sometimes known as Doctor Death in a previous life, to discuss his new book, “In Sickness And In Power- illness in heads of government during the last 100 years”. While Dr Owen has a … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, History, Politics
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