Tag Archives: anthony seldon

Brown at 10: the authoritative account – which lays into Ed Balls

When it first came out Brown at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge was extremely well received for its authoritative detail and the revised paperback edition maintains that standard well. With Seldon being one of the founders of the modern school of contemporary history, it is no surprise that the book follows the thorough, heavily documented approach contemporary historians strive for – with over 1 million words of interviews recorded for posterity (even if many are, for the next 30 years, withheld from public view) and extensive access to private diaries.

The huge depth of research is accompanied by …

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Book review: the Anthony Seldon solution to restoring trust in national life

Written over last summer by Professor Anthony Seldon and a mini-army of assistants, Trust is at heart both an optimistic and a pessimistic book.

Optimistic because one of Seldon’s arguments is that “trusting and being trustworthy are the sovereign human virtues we need today trust is natural: we were born trusting and the state of nature is to be trusting”. Pessimistic because his formula for restoring trust is not a simple checklists of policies but rather a harder and more fundamental shift in how individuals behave and a recipe of broad change across nearly every part of public policy.

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  • Judy Abel
    @Hywel fair point although second class letters are so slow that I would prefer the French model!...
  • Judy Abel
    @Ynys I stand corrected but at least I got the right playwright and the right play!...
  • Judy Abel
    @Simon yes we should either subsidise the essential services we value and pay for them through progressive taxation or not privatise businesses that then extrac...
  • Judy Abel
    @Peter I agree the media sets the tone in a lot of cases! Look at the disproprtionate number of times Farage appeared on Question Time. Our media is right leani...
  • Hywel
    "La Poste in France delivers six days a week and a normal stamp for a letter delivered within three days costs £1.30." GIven that second class post in the U...