In an age ever more obsessed with the importance of crafting effective political ‘stories’ and ‘narratives’, Jacqueline Mulhallen’s Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary is a timely review of the life and work of a poet writing 200 years ago acutely aware of the vital role the imagination plays in extending the horizons of political possibility.
Reviews
Submission: a scepticism that questions scepticism
Michel Houellebecq, ever controversial, imagines France shunning centre-left and -right and voting for an Islamic republic to defeat Marine Le Pen’s Front National. A piquant review of an acerbic novel on the limits of liberalism.
Injustice: why social inequality still persists
Danny Dorling’s magisterial analysis (2009) of inequality has been republished in a revised edition and, as this review underlines, the gap between rich and poor has widened. What can we do? A lot..
A Very British Coup, revisited
A Very British Coup, Chris Mullin’s 1982 thriller about a radical Labour leader brought down by a fearful establishment makes for fascinating re-reading in light of Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected success in this year’s leadership campaign.
Blue Labour’s theology of the common good
British politicians famously ‘don’t do God’. But much of Labour’s programme for government is inspired by an avowedly theological movement: Blue Labour. Justin Reynolds reviews a new book challenging orthodoxies of the left and right.