Stephen Howe teaches politics at Ruskin College, Oxford. He is author of Anitcolonialism in British Politics, published by Oxford, and has contributed to the New Statesman since 1988.
In 1950 a venerable, once highly successful, long-ailing magazine quietly expired. Richard Usborne, the assistant editor in its dying days, later recalled an aficionado’s touching reaction. ‘When the Strand finally folded in 1950, my old sixth-form master wrote to me regretfully: “I loved the dear old Strand. To tell you the truth, I have not opened a copy of it in this century.” Perhaps he was the typical reader we were up against.’
Did Napoleon mutilate the nose of the Great Sphinx because he thought it looked too ‘African’? Is the star Sirius B a storehouse of energy and information transmitted specifically to...
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