On the British left’s historical inability to act: A review of Duncan Thompson’s Pessimism of the Intellect: A History of the New Left Review. The ageing punk of lit crit still knows how to spit: Terry Eagleton has ferociously attacked his new Manchester University colleague Martin Amis. What is he playing at, and how should Amis respond? Terry Eagleton on how rebuking obnoxious views is not just a personality kink: "I took Martin Amis to task for advocating the hounding of Muslims, but this has been reduced to an academic spat". He grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, studied at Oxford and emerged as one of the country's leading cultural theorists, helping to define the huge changes in 20th-century Britain: Stuart Hall on the alarming cultural shifts that define the new century. A review of Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses by Theodore Dalrymple. Stealing from Churches: An excerpt form Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life by Roger Scruton. A review of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray
