The Burning Archive podcast 9 – the Red Guards are Coming
The latest episode of my podcast discusses the Chinese Cultural Revolution – is such ferment and fervour to be celebrated or to be feared?
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Burning Archive Podcast #6 – The true history of the bureaucracy gang
I have posted episode 6 of The Burning Archive Podcast, – the true history of the bureaucracy gang. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple and other platforms.…
Poem: An Aubade
I have begun a new poetry collection that explores my experiences in this locked down year in which I have also been freed from sleep apnoea and chronic fatigue by…
How democracies really die
I found on my bookshelf by chance yesterday the 2018 jeremiad by two Harvard University professors (of government and the “science of government” no less!), Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt,…
Reflections on 2019 – the democratic rebuff to progressivism
Democracy is a mesmerising word. The power of the idea overwhelms definition and precise thinking. The mandarin political theorist, Emeritus Professor John Dunn of Cambridge University, posed these questions in…
My descriptions of the Northern Peoples – travel in Stockholm and Uppsala
I am returning today to my notes on my travels, and piecing together the literary and cultural associations prompted by my travels through Stockholm and Uppsala in June. I began…
My wordpress 11th anniversary retrospective: 3 dilemmas of government
I am continuing my blogging retrospective today by reposting a small think-piece from The Happy Pessimist blog. If I have done my digital erasure correctly, you will not find any…
Oakeshott and the infinite conversation
Michael Oakeshott, the conservative philosopher, has appeared once or twice before in the Burning Archive, mostly in association with my discussions of governing. I discussed how Paul Kelly took ideas…
What I am reading… on governing and imagination
amzn.asia/0CNwQ94 from John Dunn, Breaking Democracy’s Spell
What I am reading… Karl Gützlaff, missionary, drug dealer
From Platt, Imperial Twilight, comes the story of Karl Gützlaff who was a German Lutheran missionary who yet could pass himself off as a native Fujian Chinese trader. He made…
