Jonathan Mirsky
A Giant Among Pygmies
John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics
By Richard Parker
Old Street Publishing 822pp £25 order from our bookshop
The public intellectual is an increasingly rare species. I don’t mean academic celebrities with their television series and regular op-ed columns. Public intellectuals are men or women of considerable intellectual attainment, usually professors at the older universities, who are also committed to public service where their wisdom and experience are admired and their judgement sought. Such figures need not be politically neutral; indeed, they may fall out with political leaders who come to dislike their blunt advice, perhaps given in private and public.
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Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me