Harry Pearse considers the arguments against giving children the vote and finds them wanting: "The fact that adults don’t need to show franchise credentials or an independence of mind shows that voting is not a privilege of competency, but rather a right of citizenship."
"He disliked cars, perceiving correctly that the post-War conviction that motor vehicles must dictate the future shape of cities had been responsible for wrecking many venerable town centres. One of his most successful books was Britain’s Lost Cities (2007), which pointed out in heartfelt terms the damage that planners of the sixties, seventies and still more recently, have done to Birmingham and Bristol, to Glasgow, Liverpool and many other places." Gillian Tindall remembers Gavin Stamp.
Joy Wiltenburg finds that the idea that women can't do humour is a 20th-century heresy.
"The community of the early modern English village was transposed to the vast and untamed New World, populated largely by the most enthusiastic religious adherents. To the claustrophobia of the village was added the terrifying emptiness of the wilderness that lurked beyond the homesteads—as well as aching fears engendered by subsistence farming thousands of miles from home, where the failure of the land or of the farmer’s skill meant death." Francis Young reviews of a book on the fear of witchcraft in 17th-century America.
1 comment:
What a coincidence - I was thinking about Gavin Stamp yesterday morning, and wondering what had happened to him after Glasgow. Thanks for the link to the Gillian Tindall piece.
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