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Self-Deceptions of Empire

David Bromwich: Reinhold Niebuhr, 23 October 2008

The Irony of American History 
by Reinhold Niebuhr.
Chicago, 174 pp., £8.50, June 2008, 978 0 226 58398 3
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... put it, of a ‘dictator, created by democracy and appointed by parliament’. As late as 1935, Winston Churchill could speak of Germany as a democracy that had strayed from itself; and he could wonder if Hitler might yet prove the leader to bring Germany back ‘serene, helpful and strong, to the forefront of the European family circle’. When, on 7 March ...

The Groom Stripped Bare by His Suitor

Jeremy Harding: John Lennon, 4 January 2001

Lennon Remembers 
by Jann Wenner.
Verso, 151 pp., £20, October 2000, 1 85984 600 9
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... about politics and hitched his wagon more conspicuously to causes, he was strangely wide of the mark. He believed, as only a millionaire could, that ‘Working-Class Hero’ was ‘a revolutionary song’ (true, inasmuch as it forecast the Thatcher revolution); he had half a mind to idolise Mao (a lot of people did, from Richard Nixon to Julia Kristeva). At ...

I need money

Christian Lorentzen: Biden Tries Again, 10 September 2020

Yesterday’s Man: The Case against Joe Biden 
by Branko Marcetic.
Verso, 288 pp., £12.99, March 2020, 978 1 83976 028 0
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... palatable to Republicans. The book – highly readable thanks to the efforts of its ghost, Mark Zwonitzer – opens with a kitchen table conversation at Biden’s grandparents’ house in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the 1950s:Grandpop, his pals from the neighbourhood, maybe a crony from the Scranton Tribune, and my Finnegan uncles, Jack and ...

Do I like it?

Terry Castle: Outsider Art, 28 July 2011

... to artistically unschooled violon d’Ingres types like D.H. Lawrence, Arnold Schoenberg, Winston Churchill and Prince Charles – talented amateur painters, possibly, but not exactly what you would call marginal or psychically alienated figures. Euphemistic, in turn, because once again the sheer intransigence of outsider art – its ...

Fat Man

Steven Shapin: Churchill’s Bomb, 26 September 2013

Churchill’s Bomb: A Hidden History of Science, War and Politics 
by Graham Farmelo.
Faber, 554 pp., £25, October 2013, 978 0 571 24978 7
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... Winston Churchill’s decision to drop the world’s first atomic bomb on Berlin on 1 July 1947 wasn’t a difficult one. The war hadn’t been going well since the landings in the Pas de Calais in May 1946 were thrown back with terrible losses – a failure that had much to do with the amount of treasure and materiel that had been diverted to Britain’s nuclear weapons programme ...

The dead are all around us

Hilary Mantel: Helen Duncan, 10 May 2001

Hellish Nell: Last of Britain’s Witches 
by Malcolm Gaskill.
Fourth Estate, 402 pp., £15.99, April 2001, 1 84115 109 2
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... April 1944. Winston Churchill sent a memo to Herbert Morrison at the Home Office: Let me have a report on why the Witchcraft Act, 1735, was used in a modern Court of Justice. What was the cost of this trial to the State, observing that witnesses were brought from Portsmouth and maintained here in this crowded London, for a fortnight, and the Recorder kept busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery, to the detriment of necessary work in the Courts? The person tried and convicted at the war-damaged Old Bailey was a stout and ailing Scotswoman called Helen Duncan, whom few people loved and many exploited ...

Crossman and Social Democracy

Peter Clarke, 16 April 1981

The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman 
edited by Janet Morgan.
Hamish Hamilton/Cape, 1136 pp., £15, March 1981, 0 241 10440 8
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... his own convenience,’ Crossman observed about an incident in which he revealed his support for Winston Churchill instead of Barbara Castle. Bevan felt an affinity with Churchill, and perhaps hoped for an analogous vindication in ignoring all the ordinary rules of political advancement. Crossman warned Bevan early in 1956 that he must play with the team if ...

Jungle Joys

Alfred Appel Jr: Wa-Wa-Wa with the Duke, 5 September 2002

... quotations or dismiss them as self-indulgent distractions or pointless jokes, which misses the mark.The postwar bebop jazzmen employed musical quotations even more often than Ellington. Charlie Parker frequently concludes fast-paced, hard-swinging numbers by stopping on a dime and gaily quoting – out of tempo, with leisurely elegance – from Percy ...

Into the Underworld

Iain Sinclair: The Hackney Underworld, 22 January 2015

... will start at Harrow and follow a track across town, in the footsteps of Tory grandees like Winston Churchill, all the way to Downing Street. The gimmick is that urban fracking will be a horizontal manoeuvre, like sliding poker chips across green baize. A blind grope rather than a full-frontal assault. And as for the nimby notion that violent insults to ...

Day 5, Day 9, Day 16

LRB Contributors: On Ukraine, 24 March 2022

... cronies. Jeremy HardingThe​  total number of Ukrainians on the move has passed the two million mark. The figure is rising. Before the Russians invaded, the UNHCR put the Ukrainian diaspora worldwide at roughly six million, the great majority in Europe. Just under twenty thousand of those were in France, where figures for new arrivals are also on the ...

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