Daily life at the 18th-century Bank of England
Anne L. Murphy provides a vivid picture of clients, clerks and couriers, pay and perks, cases of fraud and incompetence and the underappreciated threat of fire and violence
Why I can no longer support Boris Johnson
Dear Prime Minister, As you know, I have supported you throughout your career in politics: for Mayor of London in…
The Enlightenment was a many-splendoured thing
History used to be so much easier. There were the Wars of the Roses, then the Reformation, the Civil War,…
My clash with Cameron
MPs have a standard approach to political biographies, which falls into three phases: first, preliminary gossip about what will or…
Walter Bagehot: the revered Victorian who got almost everything wrong
Who was Walter Bagehot? For generations of politics students he has been the all-but-unpronounceable — Bayge-hot? Baggott? — author of…
Adam Smith would have approved of Trump’s trade tariffs
‘What the hell is going on?’ That anxious wail of economic incomprehension has been heard ever since President Trump decided…
John Law: the Scottish gambler who rescued France from bankruptcy
John Law was by any standards a quite remarkable man. At the apogee of his power in 1720, he was…
Thomas Paine: spendthrift, scrounger and polemicist of genius
‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ Ronald Reagan made this most unconservative of lines…
Passion, authority and the odd mini-rant: Scruton’s conservative vision
Roger Scruton is that rarest of things: a first-rate philosopher who actually has a philosophy. Unfortunately at times for him,…
Where did the Right and the Left come from?
What is the origin of left and right in politics? The traditional answer is that these ideas derive from the…
