Search Results

Advanced Search

286 to 300 of 976 results

Sort by:

Filter by:

Contributors

Article Types

Authors

The Statistical Gaze

Helen McCarthy: The British Census, 29 June 2017

The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick-Maker: The Story of Britain through Its Census, since 1801 
by Roger Hutchinson.
Little, Brown, 352 pp., £20, February 2017, 978 1 4087 0701 2
Show More
Show More
... preceding Classes’. Even this relatively simple task appeared to be beyond many local officials. John Rickman, who, following the lead of France and the United States, had dreamed up the idea of a nationwide head count and persuaded Parliament to back it, described the enumerators as men ‘who answer plain questions with much sincerity, but to whom ...

A Magazine of Wisdom

Linda Colley, 4 September 1997

Edmund Burke: A Life in Caricature 
by Nicholas Robinson.
Yale, 214 pp., £30, October 1996, 0 300 06801 8
Show More
The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke. Vol. III: Party, Parliament and the American War 1774-80 
edited by Warren Elofson and John Woods.
Oxford, 713 pp., £75, September 1996, 0 19 822414 1
Show More
Edmund Burke and India: Political Morality and Empire 
by Frederick Whelan.
Pittsburgh, 384 pp., £39.95, December 1996, 0 8229 3927 4
Show More
Show More
... Infinitely more profound and productive than his nearest 18th-century equivalent, Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, he was also far more prominent in national politics over a much longer span than John Milton or the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury in the 17th century, J.S. Mill in the 19th century, and Bertrand Russell ...

‘Just get us out’

Ferdinand Mount, 21 March 2019

... had won the war, and so on. For his underlying allegation, that the queen is forbidden by ancient laws from acknowledging any authority superior to or other than her own, is a commonplace among the most learned Brexiteers. In fact, they often go much further back than 1689. Sir John Redwood, fellow of All Souls ...

Henry and Hamlet

Barbara Everett, 22 February 2024

... and successor will probably himself be killed in the process). The tragedy’s monarchical laws and customs – however faithful those involved believe themselves to be – are now impossible, given the nature of society and its constituent and fallen human beings. This sense of impossibility is also discoverable in Shakespeare’s very early ...

Yoked together

Frank Kermode, 22 September 1994

History: The Home Movie 
by Craig Raine.
Penguin, 335 pp., £9.99, September 1994, 0 14 024240 6
Show More
Show More
... a point that has always been disputed. ‘Every stanza,’ wrote Spenser’s 18th-century editor John Hughes, ‘made as it were a distinct paragraph, grows tiresome by continual repetition and frequently breaks the sense, when it ought to be carried on without interruption.’ Others contrast Spenser’s heavy pace and patches of opacity with the more ...

Travels on the left

Paul Foot, 2 December 1993

John Strachey: An Intellectual Biography 
by Noel Thompson.
Macmillan, 288 pp., £27.50, May 1993, 0 333 51154 9
Show More
John Strachey 
by Michael Newman.
Manchester, 208 pp., £12.99, September 1989, 9780719021749
Show More
Show More
... for Aston, Birmingham issued the following leaflet: £5 Reward! DESPERATE TORIES WILD LIE. Mr John Strachey writes: ‘It has come to my notice that Tory canvassers are making the outrageous statement that I am a foreigner. This is a most serious allegation which the Aston Tory Party, utterly beaten in political argument, has fallen back upon as a last ...

Encounters with Trees

Jerry Fodor, 20 April 1995

Mind and World 
by John McDowell.
Harvard, 191 pp., £19.95, October 1994, 0 674 57609 8
Show More
Show More
... of Naturalism is working itself out in Mind and World. There’s the reductionist version – John McDowell calls it ‘bald’ Naturalism; ‘Scientism’ is another pejorative currently in fashion. And there’s the kind of naturalistic pluralism that McDowell himself is striving for. Very roughly the distinction is between the tradition that runs from ...

Brother-Making

James Davidson, 8 February 1996

The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe 
by John Boswell.
Fontana, 412 pp., £8.99, January 1996, 0 00 686326 4
Show More
Show More
... Sexual Dissidence, have caused scarcely a ripple outside the literary critical lagoon, but when John Boswell, a rather old-fashioned medieval historian, claimed to have discovered evidence for gay marriages being celebrated and blessed inside Christian churches, he made waves. It is not altogether obvious why the suggestion should be so shocking. Why is it ...

Mr Straight and Mr Good

Paul Foot: Gordon Brown, 19 February 1998

Gordon Brown: The Biography 
by Paul Routledge.
Simon and Schuster, 358 pp., £17.99, February 1998, 0 684 81954 6
Show More
Show More
... in the race for Labour’s deputy leadership against the candidate supported by the Tribune Group, John Prescott? Right again. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. In The Candidate, the great American film about political compromise starring Robert Redford, a young welfare lawyer is persuaded against his instinct to go into politics to change the world. He starts by ...

Tolerant Repression

Blair Worden, 10 May 1990

Thomas Starkey and the Commonweal 
by Tom Mayer.
Cambridge, 326 pp., £32.50, April 1989, 0 521 36104 4
Show More
Politics and Literature in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII 
by Alistair Fox.
Blackwell, 317 pp., £35, September 1989, 0 631 13566 9
Show More
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Portraits at the Court of Henry VIII 
by Retha Warnicke.
Cambridge, 326 pp., £14.95, November 1989, 0 521 37000 0
Show More
English Travellers Abroad 1604-1667 
by John Stoye.
Yale, 448 pp., £12.95, January 1990, 0 300 04180 2
Show More
Show More
... more often acknowledged than explored. Fox’s concern is the imaginative literature of the age of John Skelton and Thomas More, and then of Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey: literature which he believes to have been gravely undervalued, and which he commends not only for its intrinsic pleasures but as a rich historical source. What the most ...

In and out of the mind

Colin McGinn, 2 December 1993

Renewing Philosophy 
by Hilary Putnam.
Harvard, 234 pp., £19.95, January 1993, 9780674760936
Show More
Show More
... his dubiously broad sense) has been uprooted. All we are told is that Wittgenstein (along with John Dewey) illustrates the way ‘philosophical reflection which is completely honest can unsettle our prejudices and our pet convictions and our blind spots without flashy claims to deconstruct truth itself or the world itself’. Surely he is a lot more ...

Give Pot a Chance

Roy Porter, 8 June 1995

Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine 
by Lester Grinspoon, edited by James Bakalar.
Yale, 184 pp., £7.95, April 1995, 0 300 05994 9
Show More
Show More
... This is not hard to explain. In studies of traditional contraception and abortion practices, John Riddle has demonstrated how often knowledge of therapeutic agents formerly possessed by the folk memory and by medical practitioners has been lost. Urbanisation obliterates hand-me-down lore. Medicine’s growing claims to scientific status result in ...

Reasons to Comply

Philippe Sands: International law, 20 July 2006

The Limits of International Law 
by Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner.
Oxford, 262 pp., £17.99, February 2005, 0 19 516839 9
Show More
War Law: International Law and Armed Conflict 
by Michael Byers.
Atlantic, 214 pp., £16.99, April 2005, 1 84354 338 9
Show More
Show More
... of legitimate concern. A similar debate is needed in Britain, as an increasing number of national laws are adopted off the back of international norms which have often been negotiated by the executive in circumstances in which the legislature plays no role. It is also important to be clear about the limited function of global rules, especially those that ...

The Labile Self

Marina Warner: Dressing Up, 5 January 2012

Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe 
by Ulinka Rublack.
Oxford, 354 pp., £30, October 2011, 978 0 19 929874 7
Show More
Show More
... and imitated ‘superior’ Italian humanism. In this she is following the lead of the late John Hale, whose last book, The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance, let the Danube School of artists, Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Altdorfer, share space with Leonardo et al. Rublack’s quest has taken her to fascinating primary sources in German ...

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences