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Anti-Hedonism

David Marquand, 20 September 1984

Politics and the Pursuit of Happiness: An Inquiry into the Involvement of Human Beings in the Politics of Industrial Society 
by Ghita Ionescu.
Longman, 248 pp., £16.50, September 1984, 0 582 29549 1
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... openly, Benthamite hedonism covertly – that the end of happiness justifies whatever means are necessary to obtain it. If the goal of full Communism requires the crushing of free trade unions, the murder of the kulaks or the torture of dissenters, then trade unions must be crushed, kulaks murdered and dissenters tortured. If the competitive ...

Short Cuts

David Runciman: Just ask Tony, 10 October 2024

... and desperate to understand them. He has done his best to educate himself about what it all means, with the help of the friends he has made at the top of the tech industry. And he is keen to share what he has learned.The result is a chapter in which he provides his own potted history of how technology works, from Moore’s Law to Central Processing ...

Is it a crime?

P.N. Furbank, 6 June 1985

Peterley Harvest: The Private Diary of David Peterley 
edited by Michael Holroyd.
Secker, 286 pp., £8.95, April 1985, 0 436 36715 7
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... it is for us to examine – as the genuine diary, covering the years 1930 to 1939, of a certain David Peterley, scion of an ancient landed family. Peterley’s diary and other papers, so ran the Foreword by its ‘editor’ Richard Pennington, occupy a large red box in the McGill University Library, of which Pennington was the chief librarian, and the diary ...

I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place

David Runciman: In the White House, 11 October 2018

Fear: Trump in the White House 
by Bob Woodward.
Simon & Schuster, 448 pp., £20, September 2018, 978 1 4711 8129 0
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... if we can’t live with them we might have to kill them. Schmitt was, for a time, a Nazi, which means that his view is if anything even grimmer than it sounds. But it does make clear that squabbling over who gets to sit on the next appointments committee doesn’t necessarily deserve to be called politics. So how come office battles often feel ...

Diary

David Bromwich: President-Speak, 10 April 2008

... self-deception as well as cruelty was a danger of ‘all the wars of interest and intrigue’ (he means all wars except those of immediate self-preservation or rebellion against despotism). Wars generally are driven by ‘avarice, envy and ambition’, and foreign wars in the cause of liberty always subvert liberty in principle: the character of our ends must ...

The Big Show

David Blackbourn, 3 March 1983

‘Hitler’: A Film from Germany 
by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, introduced by Susan Sontag.
Carcanet, 268 pp., £9.95, December 1982, 0 85635 405 8
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... projectionist (‘SS-man Ellerkamp’) and the Cosmologist (a Strangelove figure set in a Caspar David Friedrich icescape) add to the richness of the texture while reinforcing the central ideal that what we are seeing is no more than a film about a film. Hitler, muses Ellerkamp, was ‘the greatest film-maker of all time’. Two principal narrators, Harry ...

Be flippant

David Edgar: Noël Coward’s Return, 9 December 1999

1956 and All That 
by Dan Reballato.
Routledge, 265 pp., £40, February 1999, 0 415 18938 1
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Collected Plays: Six 
by Noël Coward.
Methuen, 415 pp., £9.99, April 1999, 0 413 73410 2
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Collected Plays: Seven 
by Noël Coward.
Methuen, 381 pp., £9.99, April 1999, 0 413 73410 2
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Collected Revue Sketches and Parodies 
by Noël Coward.
Methuen, 282 pp., £9.99, April 1999, 0 413 73390 4
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Noël Coward: A Life in Quotes 
edited by Barry Day.
Metro, 116 pp., £9.99, November 1999, 9781900512848
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Noël Coward: The Complete Lyrics 
Methuen, 352 pp., £30, December 1998, 0 413 73230 4Show More
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... is the story, told in Philip Hoare’s 1995 biography, of Coward’s visit to the Court to see David Storey’s grittily realistic Rugby League play The Changing Room. His attention having been drawn to the male genitalia on display in the bath scene, Coward remarked: ‘13 acorns are not worth the price of admission.’ ‘Not worth the price of ...

Operation Overstretch

David Ramsbotham: Unfair to the Army, 20 February 2003

... it demanded our full commitment, in favour of something that is, at best, marginal? Iraq is by no means the only potential supplier of WMD to terrorists, and has no proven link with the most dangerous of them. Furthermore Iraq has been subjected to such a degree of international scrutiny since 1991 that it would be difficult for the Iraqis to take any action ...

Cosmic Inflation

David Kaiser: The Future of the Universe, 6 February 2014

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe 
by Lee Smolin.
Allen Lane, 319 pp., £20, April 2013, 978 1 84614 299 4
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... as Smolin sees it, is the mental leap required of us when isolating the part from the whole. It means ignoring all the many ways in which each part is embedded within the universe – all its myriad relationships and interactions with neighbouring parts. By practising this mental leap for centuries, Smolin believes, physicists have become accustomed to ...

Diary

David Kaiser: Aliens, 8 July 2010

... are so many stars out there, Cocconi and Morrison explained. Many are similar to our sun, which means that Earth-like conditions, in which our own species evolved, might be fairly common throughout the galaxy. Cocconi and Morrison were further convinced that countless civilisations were likely to have developed ‘scientific interests’ and ‘technical ...

Diary

David Lan: On Jim Allen’s Perdition, 2 April 1987

... on the grounds that it would retard their plans for the establishment of the Jewish homeland. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, is quoted in the play as saying: ‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I ...

Böllfrischgrasshandke

David Midgley: Martin Walser, 8 August 2002

Tod eines Kritikers 
by Martin Walser.
Suhrkamp, 219 pp., €19.90, June 2002, 3 518 41378 3
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... the lascivious Jew who seduces young maidens and exercises cynical control over German culture by means of his cold intellect. These moments, however, are scarcely sufficient to convict Walser of anti-semitism. And there are counter-indications which his critics omit to mention. Not all the elements of Ehrl-König’s character can be traced back to ...

Gaol Fever

David Saunders-Wilson, 24 July 1986

Prisons and the Process of Justice 
by Andrew Rutherford.
Oxford, 217 pp., £5.95, June 1986, 0 19 281932 1
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Growing out of Crime: Society and Young People in Trouble 
by Andrew Rutherford.
Penguin, 189 pp., £3.95, January 1986, 0 14 022383 5
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... overtime. Unlike many similar critical works, it also offers in its ‘Reductionist Agenda’ a means of escape from continued expansion. Such an agenda deserves serious thought from all who work within the criminal justice process. Rutherford’s nine items include provision for the reduction of the physical capacity of the prison system; a precise ...

Too Few to Mention

David Runciman: It Has to Happen, 10 May 2018

How to Stop Brexit (and Make Britain Great Again) 
by Nick Clegg.
Bodley Head, 160 pp., £8.99, October 2017, 978 1 84792 523 7
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... herself, see as a terrible mistake? Answer: none. That is the reason the search is on for a means that could allow the electorate to give voice to its regrets. If some way can be found for the people to think again it may be possible to revisit the original decision. Thinking again is in many ways the essence of democratic politics. It is what keeps the ...

Diary

Helen Sullivan: A City of Islands, 1 December 2022

... unfortunate.’ The US military holds many rounds of aptitude tests each year. There are few other means available to students who want to study overseas, and even then the army pays only for approved courses. Enlisting also means your flight off the island is paid for – a serious consideration for many young people. A ...

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