A solution to political decay: the ordinary virtues of governing well
Francis Fukuyama has recently argued that Western democratic states, especially America, are suffering political decay. The…
Is nothing sacred?
One of the surprises of my mid-life has been the admission of a longing for the sacred….
Taking time with Szymborska
One of the pleasures of disconnecting, if only for a few months, from the real world,…
Madness & History
I am reading Andrew Scull’s Madness in Civilization: a cultural history of insanity from the Bible…
A song of sorries
The Parliament of Victoria recently voted an apology for laws that criminalised homosexuality. It followed a…
Time may change me but I can’t change time
Roger Scruton writes, in How to be a Conservative: Whatever our religion and our private convictions,…
Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers
If I were to teach a course on the history of Australians in the global nineteenth…
Behavioural Anecdotes Teams
One of the more puzzling cases of British export success stories is the spread of successive…
On suicide
Over the last month or two I have been writing a government policy statement on suicide….
The enigmas of Ivan the Terrible
Ivan the Terrible tests the limits of historical understanding. All that we know of him we…