The Liberal
About UsSubscribeAdvertising
Current Issue Editor's LetterPoetryPoliticsArts & CultureReviewsCampaignsBack IssuesBookshopBlogPodcastLiberal EventsFacebook









NOBILITY OF SPIRIT: A FORGOTTEN IDEAL?
Spring 2009 issue: on-sale Thursday 5th March
Sarah Churchwell on the language of anti-liberalism
‘Barack Obama and the Politics of Expectation’
Dispatches from the Crimea and Mauritania
Comment by Peter Tatchell and Guy Dammann
Esther Freud’s Dinner for Six
Contemporary Iranian photography: a retrospective
Fiona Sampson on the lyric of madness
New poetry by Jorie Graham and George Szirtes

The language of anti-liberalism

Review by Sarah Churchwell

Who knew that the Republicans were poststructuralists at heart, and that the real victor of the culture wars would be Derrida? [more]

Jinnah’s Tragedy

By Simon Kovar

Jinnah disdained populist politics, not least of the sectarian religious variety, and argued for constitutionalism, equality under the law, and the separation of ‘church’ and state. [more]

Chapters in Verse

By John Lennard

Those still suspicious of the verse-novel, artistically or commercially, should think again, for we are in a new ‘Golden Age’ of this art form. [more]

Amol Rajan

Braving the Limelight

It is a curious fact that British law is presently designed to criminalise the diligence and dedication of those individuals who most obviously wish to work in its economy.

[more]

 Louise Whiteley

The Cognitive Olympics

The danger of cognitive enhancers is that they encourage a yearning for academic gold, whilst downplaying the value of ‘training’ and its lasting effects. [more]

Godless: The Church of Liberalism

Book review by
Christopher Hitchens

I have the distinct feeling that people do not buy Coulter's creed-screeds and speed-reads in order to enhance their knowledge of history or their command of syllogism. [more]

On Myth

By Marina Warner

The word ‘myth’ is usually used to evoke a dead religion (the Greeks’ Olympians, the Norse pantheon) but it is also applied rather heedlessly to the sacred stories of peoples who are still unconsciously counted as primitive, and unadulteratedly ancient. [more]

Not a gentle kind
of Zen

By Ed Smith

I had approached Zidane with some trepidation, as I didn’t expect to be much bothered about a real-time replay of the match between Real Madrid and Villarreal on 23rd April 2005. How wrong I was. [more]

Coming Soon

Engage with new voices and established names on a range
of cultural and political topics.

Coming Soon

A downloadable selection of political interviews, poems, music and short fiction.

Click here

Stay informed about cultural and political events hosted and recommended by The Liberal.