WHO ARE THE ENGLISH THESE DAYS?

By Michael Faulkner - 12.23.12

There has always been some confusion about national identity and citizenship in the United Kingdom.  According to the constitution, the people of the U. K. are not citizens of any state, but subjects of Her Majesty the Queen, though as a necessary adjustment to post-absolutist reality, they are referred to as U.K citizens. The official designation of the U.K. is: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  Great Britain as distinct from the U.K. includes England, Scotland...

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THE LEVESON REPORT AND THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

By Michael Faulkner on 12.09.2012

Lord Justice Leveson has finally (Friday 30. November) issued his report into the print media in Britain. There is no doubt that it will make interesting reading, though ploughing through all of its nearly 2000 pages and a million words  may take quite a while. Following his 30 minute televised presentation of the report, after which he took no questions and announced...

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IN PRAISE OF TOM PAINE, 1737 – 1809: A Personal Tribute to the First Democrat of the Modern World

By Michael Faulkner - 11.04.12

In the small Norfolk town of Thetford there is a statue to Thomas Paine, who was born there in 1737.  The town also has a hotel named after him (The Historic Thomas Paine Hotel), which, on its outer wall carries a commemorative plaque. During the Second World War an airfield...
 

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ERIC HOBSBAWM 1917 – 2012: An Appreciation

By Michael Faulkner - Letter from the U.K.

In a 2003 review of his autobiography, Interesting Times, in the New York Review of Books, Tony Judt described Eric Hobsbawm, who died on October 1 aged 95, as “the best-known historian in the world”. It was not an exaggeration. If his reputation rested solely on his four-volumes, the Ages of Revolution; Capital; Empire and Extremes, that would be enough to satisfy anyone aspiring to a place in the...

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THE 2003 INVASION OF IRAQ: WILL BLAIR FACE PROSECUTION?

By Michael Faulkner - Letter from the U.K.

In his 2001 book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, published two years before he went off the rails over the Iraq war, the late Christopher Hitchens wrote of his subject, “His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anarcharsis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs; strong enough to detain

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