I've just spent a dispiriting evening yesterday attending a party at the Edinburgh Internationl Book Festival thrown by the 'London Review of Books', a magazine which, in my opinion, would be better entitled, 'The Review of London Books'. Somehow, I'd got onto their e-mailing list. Whenever I go to these things (not often, and now, this morning, I remember just why that is), it makes me realise just how impossible it would be for someone like me even for a moment to break over the consciousness of those people and their institutions. To them, my voice is no more than that of a barking dog in a distant street.

But I'd rather be a barking dog in the street than a silent mouse in the house.

Dear Editor,

In his introduction to Darius Guppy's article (7/8/09), Chris Green attempts to delegitimise Guppy's stance by inferring his disloyalty to the UK state. In a conjunction of multiple ironies, Guppy appears now to be assuming an anti-colonial stance and berating the destructive 'bread and circus' culture through which capitalist imperialism continues to be instrumentalised globally - though of course Western European systematic 'rape and pillage' long pre-dated the dominance of secular liberalism. While one may take issue with Guppy's naive view of the current Iranian regime and his (still) exaggerated comparison of the UK with a police state, as well as with his blanket condemnation of the 'Godless Enlightenment', it is important that one does not allow such necessary 'rhetoric of opposites' to obscure his very precise depiction of the modus operandi and rank hypocrisies of neocolonial power. ... (more)