So farewell then, Miles Kington.
Go over the fold for what I think is my favourite Kington column (though I only ever read a fraction of the oeuvre), published, appropriately enough for the inventor of franglais on the occasion of the bicentenaire [Independent, 14 July 1989].
You probably all know this one already, but it bears repetition:
According to Bernard Williams:
“[Charles] Taylor and [Alasdair] MacIntyre are Catholic, and I am not; Taylor and I are liberals, and MacIntyre is not; MacIntyre and I are pessimists, and Taylor is not (not really)”
[World, Mind and Ethics, Altham & Harrson eds., p.222n19].
He has a fine turn of phrase:
Neo-Stoicism is the zig to which Deism will be the zag.
I bought Charles Taylor’s new book A Secular Age the other day. It’s a good book, but its publishers have given it a stupid dustjacket that is guaranteed to annoy (it isn’t big enough; see also here). And this reminded me that last year I bought John Rawls’s Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, another book with a stupid dustjacket, similarly annoying, though differently stupid (crinkly clear plastic). Both are published by Harvard University Press. So what’s going on? Why is Harvard experimenting with stupid dustjackets on new books by distinguished political philosophers? Are there other books by DPP’s that they are mangling in this way? And when will they stop?
Who knew there was quite so much money to be made out of an academic career in the study of political ideas? These are extraordinary sums of money.
* Charles Taylor won the 2007 Templeton Prize (£800,000!)
* Ronald Dworkin won the 2007 Holberg Prize ($750,000!)
* Quentin Skinner won the 2006 Balzan Prize (1m Swiss francs!)
* Jürgen Habermas won the 2005 Holberg Prize (NOK 4. 5 million!)
Helena Molony, Irish feminist and nationalist actress. She joined Inghinidhe na hEireann after hearing Maud Gonne speak and became editor of Bean na hEireann, a militant feminist journal in 1908. An actress at the Abbey Theatre, 1909-1913, she was arrested in 1911 for protesting against George V’s visit to Dublin. She worked closely with James Connolly before 1916, helped to found the Irish Citizen Army and fought in the Easter Rising. After internment in England, she returned to Ireland in December 1916, joined Cumann na mBan, and opposed the Treaty in 1921. She devoted herself to labour movement activity after the civil war, and was President of the Congress of Trade Unions, 1936-1945. Born in Dublin, 15 January 1883; she died in Dublin, 29 January 1967.
Franz Mehring, biographer of Karl Marx and Spartacist, born in Schlawe, 27 February 1846, died in Berlin, 29 January 1919.
Ruth Cavendish-Bentinck, suffragist and socialist of illegitimate aristocratic origins; she moved in Fabian circles; opposed vaccination; and became active in the Women’s Social and Political Union; she later established the Cavendish-Bentinck library for sufragists (now a part of the Women’s Library); and in later years became keen on Stalin’s Soviet Union. Born in Tangier, 21 October 1867, she died in London, 28 January 1953.
Ben Tillett, trade unionist and one of the leaders of the 1889 dockworkers’ strike; born in Bristol, 11 September 1860, died in London, 27 January 1943.
Perhaps they’ve been there for years, but I’ve only just noticed. Anyway, the papers from PECUS: Man and Animal in Antiquity, a conference held at the Istituto Svedese (i.e., Swedish Institute) in Rome in September 2002 are all online over here. I showed up with the rest of the gang from the British School at Rome in order to provide moral support for Michael MacKinnon, who was presenting some of his zooarchaeological work (i.e., ancient animal bones), and it then turned out to be easily the most enjoyable academic conference I’ve ever been to. Though I’m sorry to see the poster presentation (with music!) on bestialities ancient and modern in the rural mezzogiorno didn’t seem to make it through to the publication stage.
My friend Sasha Abramsky has been hanging around in Nevada brothels.
Arthur Penty, socialist architect and furniture designer, who, after falling out with the Fabians over, inter alia, the proposed new LSE building, went on to become a significant influence on the Guild Socialists, later drifting into Christian Socialism, thence to, um, support for Mosley, Mussolini and the nationalists in Spain. Born at York, 17 March 1875, died at Isleworth, Middlesex, 19 January 1937.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, French anarchist socialist, born 15 January 1809, died 19 January 1865. He never really did manage to get on with Karl Marx.
Ethel Bentham, doctor, suffragist, Fabian, member of the Labour Party’s NEC, magistrate and MP for East Islington from 1929 until her death. Born in the City of London, 5 January 1861 died in Chelsea, 19 January 1931.
I’ve finally worked out how to make the Finnish Latin news feed on the sidebar update itself, so we now have news about Nova Hantonia and Amnesty’s campaign ut lapidationem ad capitis poenam expetendam finiant. For some reason it stopped reporting the nuntii some time in the Autumn. Happily, it’s sorted out now.
Sylvain Maréchal, Babouvist and author of the Dictionnaire des Athées, born 15 August 1750, died 18 January 1803.
Now, I have no problem with a ministry of all the talents, but when the big tent ushers in the former Tory party chairman Kenneth Baker, the progressive consensus has truly lost the plot.
Young people today probably have little idea who Kenneth Baker is. (Curiously, this Wikipedia article doesn’t mention his major contribution to British Government, which was his prominent role in the early stages of the poll tax fiasco.) Perhaps we need a Museum of Britishness that could, among other things, explain his career to current and future generations? A gallery given over to the twists and turns of the Death to the Dogs crisis of May 1991 would be an excellent idea, for example, and children could be given free copies of the 1986 Green Paper, Paying for Local Government.
G. D. H. Cole, Fabian, Guild Socialist, and the first holder of the Chichele chair in Social and Political Theory at Oxford (though, curiously, this fact isn’t mentioned in the recent advert for the post, which mentions the various other incumbents); and (with Margaret Cole) author of detective fiction. Born 1889, died 15 January 1959.
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, murdered in Berlin, 15 January 1919.
The sixteenth series of Oxford Amnesty Lectures in support of the work of Amnesty International will kick off fairly soon. This year’s topic is “religion and rights”, the lecturers will take place between 25 January and 21 February, and the lecturers are Charles Curran, Simon Schama, Asma Jahangir, Tariq Ramadan, Ronald Dworkin, Chantal Mouffe and Stanley Hauerwas, ending with a debate involving A C Grayling, John Pritchard and others. Website here, schedule here, ticket info here.
From my Balliol colleague Adam Roberts’ valedictory lecture, on retiring from the Montague Burton chair in International Relations at Oxford (and reproduced in this week’s Oxford Magazine):
Montague Burton (1885-1952), the great pioneer of mass production tailoring and the benefactor of the chair, was an incurable believer in modernity. In his extensive travels, his notes on which he published privately in two volumes entitled Global Girdling, he demonstrated a love of the modern and, with only a few exceptions, a dislike of antiquity. Visiting the Middle East in the 1930s, he hated the Pyramids and the Wailing Wall. By contrast he loved the railway on which one could glide from Cairo to Tel Aviv and thence to Jerusalem - a symbol of modernity to him that now seems to us to belong to an era long gone. He praise the Jerusalem Electricity Works - and he had no higher terms of praise than this - as ‘reminiscent of Bourneville and Port Sunlight. He was a passionate believer in the League of Nations: 6,000 of the employees at his Leeds factory belonged to the Montague Burton Branch of the League of Nations Union. His progressivism itself looks charmingly antique - as does his belief that if you put all men in suits you would deliver a body blow to the class system. Indeed, he developed ingenious schemes whereby customers could buy not just the suit but all that goes with it - the shirt, the tie, even socks and shows. This is almost certainly the origin of the phrase ‘The Full Monty’. I was tempted to entitle this lecture ‘The Full Monty’, but I don’t believe in encouraging false expectations, especially as by a perverse irony, thanks to Peter Cattaneo’s memorable 1997 film, The Full Monty now means the exact opposite of what it did originally.
James Joyce, novelist and socialist (”He calls himself a socialist, but attaches himself to no school of socialism”, said his brother); born 2 February 1882, died 13 January 1941 in Zürich.
Two more specimens came to light this week, and I’m not willing to wait until late October to share them with you. First, the Simone de Beauvoir centenary has led to newspaper articles like this one; second, an erudite colleague has drawn my attention to a passage from Charles Fourier, in which he argues that the dilapidated state of turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Frenchwomen gives us just as little insight into what women might be like one day as the torpor of the beaver in captivity gives us any clue to the real nature of the beaver (or something like that, anyway).
