‘The Glass Universe’
When the book begins, a notable astronomer of the Lowell family could still look up at Mars and be convinced he saw canals, and a Martian race, thirsty, searching for water, desperate for our help. The women of the Harvard College Observatory were less romantic, and less wrong. More
Popular Conservatism
In the quest to capture the middle ground that wins elections in a first-past-the-post system, the party of the left inevitably finds itself in an unacknowledged relationship of co-dependence with the party of the right. So much the better, surely, if that enemy on the right is not messianically capitalist? More
One, Two, Three, Eyes on Me!
Academies and free schools have been granted considerable freedom in the approach they take to pedagogy. Some have imported methods from the US, borrowing in particular from a network of charter schools called the Knowledge is Power Programme (KIPP). At these schools the motto is ‘Work hard. Be nice.’ Highly qualified but often inexperienced young teachers deliver carefully structured content to students, pushing them to ‘climb the mountain to college’. They are notoriously strict: articles about KIPP quote parents calling it the ‘Kids in Prison Programme’. More
Dunkirk, 1940
Trying to keep track of my father and his troop as they move through this momentous sequence of events is like trying to keep one’s eyes on a single small fish in a vast migrating shoal of pilchards. Now you see it, now you don’t, and you never will again. Other people were watching him far more closely than I possibly can, and they noticed that he was cool under fire, shouldered responsibility when responsibility was thrust on him, spoke like a gentleman, and could play a decent hand at bridge. He was earmarked for early promotion. More
At the IWM North
Jon Day
LATEST AUDIO
AUDIO Don’t learn shorthand
Carmen Callil talks to Rosemary Hill about London in the 1960s. Listen »
VIDEO The Eitingons
Mary-Kay Wilmers tells Andrew O’Hagan about her family on her mother’s side. Watch »
