patriotism
An unheroic hero: Ginster, by Siegfried Kracauer, reviewed
When Kracauer’s protagonist is finally conscripted in the first world war, he starves himself to ‘general physical debility’ and is sent to ‘peel potatoes against the foe’
How to raise a patriot
‘Good news for patriots,’ said one of our most celebrated national newspapers this week: ‘Your numbers are likely to swell.’…
Bristling with meaning: the language of hair in 19th-century America
Beards, moustaches, whiskers, free-flowing curls or cropped coifs – all were signifiers of morality, trustworthiness or political ideology
Proud to be British
Sunder Katwala, of Indian-Irish heritage, analyses the whiteness of the Remain vote, seeing Britain’s pro-European movement as a case of cosmopolitanism without diversity
Monstrous conceit
If you want to judge how much society has changed, you might do worse than visit a few secondhand bookshops.…
What Starmer can learn from Miliband’s mug
Since becoming Labour leader, Keir Starmer has single-mindedly been trying to persuade red wall voters that Labour is ‘patriotic’, just like…
Why Roy Cohn is not one of the world’s most evil men
New York The Roy Cohn documentary Bully. Coward. Victim: the Story of Roy Cohn was successfully screened at the…
Should I return to the land of my Italian ancestors?
When I was growing up, my Italian grandfather was my favourite person. He taught me to play a mean game…
Which town is most proud to be English?
Ready for take-off? That Heathrow timeline in full: 1949 Labour government proposes an additional two runways for newly opened Heathrow…
I dream of my perfect state: Sparta
Gstaad It was nostalgia time at Prince Victor Emmanuel’s birthday party here, with many old friends reminiscing about our youthful…
Throw away the Valium and start bragging instead
This is not a book to be read in solitude. Not for the obvious reason that it’s frightening, but because…
All in the worst possible taste
In the giftshop at the new Elvis exhibition at the Dome, you can buy your own version of his flared…
Diary
An embarrassing confession: in the late 1960s, I was a Trotskyite. But that period of political adolescence has its uses.…
Without patriotism, there’s no civilisation
Is it racist to be patriotic? Is patriotism, by definition, small-minded and exclusive? When you strip away the onion layers…
God save England
The patriotism of the Great War’s finest poets was neither narrow nor triumphalist but reflected an intense devotion to an endangered country and to a way of life worth dying for, says David Crane
