Faber & Faber

Here is the full text of Cameron’s speech.

David Cameron gave what seems to be a significant speech on liberty an hour or so ago. I’ll put up the full text when it becomes available. In the meantime, here is a report in the Telegraph Here is an indication: The balance of power in our country has shifted away from the individual – just trying to [...]

Here is an article (the first of four) which I wrote for the Guardian’s Liberty Central.

Here is an enjoyable and enlightening chat I had recently with the brilliant Petina Gappah

Reviews of the book have been very interesting. Max Hastings in the Sunday Times. Niall Ferguson in the FT Conor Gearty in the Guardian Jonathan Derbyshire in the Literary Review Dan Jones in the Spectator Peter Wilby in the New Statesman Terry Eagleton’s review in the LRB is restricted to subscribers. But here is a flavour: ‘What Price Liberty? is an erudite, eminently [...]

Straw, Blunkett, Clarke, Reid, Smith and now Johnson… It has been a fascinating few days in politics. Now, in the last months of Labour government, what is the government’s strategy (if they have one) regarding matters of civil liberty? Gordon Brown has always been torn on matters of liberalism and authoritarianism. The departure of Blears and [...]

Here is the second part of my interview with Andy Beckett about liberty in the 1970s:

I love this. If you think your neighbour is too well turned out (and live in Sussex) you can telephone Sussex police as part of their new initiative, 2 Much Bling? Give us a ring.

A little while ago Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court, discussing privacy issues, said he didn’t care what people found out about him on the internet. Professor Joel Reidenberg set his students the task of finding everything that was publicly available about Scalia. The result was a 15 page dossier which included Scalia’s dietary preferences, his favourite [...]

Since 2001 1,471 people have been arrested under anti-terror laws. Of whom 642 (44.32%) were charged with an offence or dealt with in another way (eg deportation, caution or detained under the Mental Health Act) 521 were charged with an offence (35.4%) Of whom 222 were charged with a offence under specific anti-terror laws (15% of total [...]