Wednesday, August 03, 2005
May I Send You Somewhere Else?
Unfortunately, I've not been able to blog for a while and probably won't do anything substantial for a few days more - got a spot of work on.
So I'll just point you in the direction of a few things I've read recently and which you might like to look at.
Secondly, Richard Gott's essay on Blair from the same issue of NLR is quite an entertaining read. An extract:
"Blair’s many biographers have pored over his life’s choices to reveal the figure of a grey and essentially conventional lawyer, with little aptitude for management, poor inter-personal skills and deep ignorance of the outside world, who frequently evokes religious faith as a substitute for rational thought. This is one of his two most unusual characteristics. Blair is not an ordinarily religious man; he is by many accounts a ‘religious nut’, a ‘New Ager’, a man who obeys his own inner voices and takes scant notice of religious authority....
Blair’s second unusual characteristic is his ability as an actor. Both at Fettes, the Scottish private school he attended in the 1960s, and at St John’s College, Oxford, where he was a mediocre law student, he was an accomplished thespian, appearing in the classics, in comedy revues, and fronting a band. His capacity to act and to put on an act, to perform his lines, and to diverge from a script when circumstances demand, has become the hallmark of his career as a politician... "
Third, Ben Watson on 'Philosophising Post Punk' in Radical Philosophy.
Fourth - Eric Hobsbawm reviews Goran Therborn's latest book on family, patriarchy and power.
So I'll just point you in the direction of a few things I've read recently and which you might like to look at.
Secondly, Richard Gott's essay on Blair from the same issue of NLR is quite an entertaining read. An extract:
"Blair’s many biographers have pored over his life’s choices to reveal the figure of a grey and essentially conventional lawyer, with little aptitude for management, poor inter-personal skills and deep ignorance of the outside world, who frequently evokes religious faith as a substitute for rational thought. This is one of his two most unusual characteristics. Blair is not an ordinarily religious man; he is by many accounts a ‘religious nut’, a ‘New Ager’, a man who obeys his own inner voices and takes scant notice of religious authority....
Blair’s second unusual characteristic is his ability as an actor. Both at Fettes, the Scottish private school he attended in the 1960s, and at St John’s College, Oxford, where he was a mediocre law student, he was an accomplished thespian, appearing in the classics, in comedy revues, and fronting a band. His capacity to act and to put on an act, to perform his lines, and to diverge from a script when circumstances demand, has become the hallmark of his career as a politician... "
Third, Ben Watson on 'Philosophising Post Punk' in Radical Philosophy.
Fourth - Eric Hobsbawm reviews Goran Therborn's latest book on family, patriarchy and power.
