Books

“There’s something enticing about a belief that great men are in command of history. It is easier, perhaps, to deal with that than to deal with the more alarming possibility that the norms which underpinned post-war liberalism are fraying”

“Current events would seem to suggest that there is no consensus on what “our values” might actually be. Society is more divided than at any time I can recall in my lifetime”

“Understanding a culture’s magic is as important as understanding its religion or science. It can bring us closer to the mindset of a people that might otherwise seem completely alien to us now”

“Innovation — it’s the reason you’re almost certainly richer than your great-grandparents, why your lighting at home is powered by electricity rather than refined lamb fat, and why your hulking great suitcase has wheels”

“Stephanie Kelton’s new book, The Deficit Myth, promises to explode the “myth” that governments need to worry about debt or overspending”

The way Amazon has profited from the Covid-19 crisis is simply another example of how — in just a quarter of a century — its tentacles have insidiously coiled themselves around virtually every aspect of our lives

Caroline Maclean’s Circles and Squares reads like a roll-call of the artistic great and good of the interwar years — whose enterprise stands in stark relation to the mess of their private lives

Jonathan Bate offers readers new to Wordsworth a gripping and perceptive account of a great poet in his prime — and the years in which the poet’s fame overtook a sadly diminished talent

“Until the 17th century, travel to and on the European continent was commonly the concern of missionaries and pilgrims. With time, it became codified, packaged; it could be visited and ticked off”