David Hume
A dutiful exercise carried out in a rush
The final volume of Peter Ackroyd’s History of England feels like a dutiful exercise carried out in a hurry, says Philip Hensher
The age of de-enlightenment
Depictions of Thomas Carlyle and David Hume in the Scottish Portrait Gallery will be altered to make it clear they…
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,…
The low sculduggery of high Victorian finance
The whole idea of capitalism, according to Enlightenment philosophers, was that it created a positive spiral of moral behaviour. ‘Concern…
Scotland’s miraculous century (it started with the Union)
In 1707 Scotland surrendered what it had of its independence by the Treaty of Union with England. That independence had…
