My Brains Trust - part I

I liked the idea of the little “brains trust” Paul Collier gathered round him when he was writing “The Future of Capitalism”. One of the critical remarks I have made about what is otherwise a great book is that it doesn’t mention a lot of writing which essential to the question – a few of which I point to in the first link.

And this has given me the idea of providing my own “Brains Trust” -  ie of individuals and books I would invite to help me understand better the heated debates (taking place throughout the world) about how our present economic system might be brought under control…

These posts frequently comment on this dreadful failure of those who write books on the subject to “stand on the shoulders of giants” ie to reference (let alone properly discuss) the ideas of the thousands of other writers who are contributing to this critical debate    

The best way to deal with this is via what has perhaps become this blog’s most famous feature - its tables.  

My invited guests start with those who were writing “Before the Crash” – a large selection of which I wrote about more than two years ago. I have divided my guests up in this way for several reasons but mainly because our collective memories fade so quickly these days - and some of the younger generation will therefore not even have heard of these authors and books, 

Sadly, quite a few of the authors are now dead – but their spirit and inspiration live on!

BEFORE THE CRASH (in alphabetical order)

Name	Title of relevant book	What they bring to the table
Daniel Bell	Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)	Bell was a sociologist -  with wide-ranging tastes
Hazel Henderson	Creating Alternative Futures (1978)	One of the first critiques of economics – and still going strong
Ronald Douthwaite	Short Circuit – strengthening local economies in an unstable world” (1996)	Very practical – but also inspirational….23 years on, it hasn’t really been bettered
Amitai Etzioni	The Spirit of Community – rights, responsibilities and the communitarian agenda (1995)	Another sociologist whose writings have ranged widely Recent article by the author
Marlyn Ferguson	The Aquarian Conspiracy – personal and social transformation in the 1980s (1981)	An amazing bridge between the 60s and our times
Jeff Gates	The Ownership Solution- toward a shared capitalism for the 21st Century (1998)	This is an important book of almost 400 pages which, sadly, gets forgotten perhaps because its analysis and message is a moderate one.
Susan George	“The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century” 1999	A political scientist gives us a satirical piece which forces us to think where present forces are taking us….
Paul Hawken	Natural Capitalism – the next industrial revolution;(1999)	A persuasive vision of how green technology could revitalize capitalism
Paul Hirst	“Associative Democracy. New forms of economic and social governance” (1994) Hirst was a political scientist	Revisiting Associative Democracy; ed Westall (2011). An overdue assessment of the relevance of Paul Hirst’s ideas more than a decade after his death
Albert Hirschman	One of the most famous of his many books was called “Trespassing” since that is what he did to other disciplines – particularly political philosophy as you can see here	He was that rare animal - a much appreciated development economist! Two excellent appreciations are Albert Hirschman and the social sciences – a memorial roundtable ; and For a Better World – Albert Hirschman’s Legacy (2017)
David Korten	When Corporations Rule the World (1995) The Post-Corporate World – Life after Capitalism (1999)	Korten was one of the first to embark on serious activism as a result of his early disillusionment
Robert Kuttner	Everything for Sale – the virtues and limits of markets (1996)	An academic/journalist who has written 360 pages about the limits and about 40 on the virtues…Given the celebrationism of the time, this was very courageous
Ernst Schumacher	Small is Beautiful – economics as if people mattered (1973)	He was  an economist – employed in the UK Coal Board in the 1950s and is the inspiration for the Green movement
Richard Sennett	The Culture of the new capitalism (2006)	Sennett remains one of the few intellectuals capable of matching Daniel Bell in the lucidity of their expositions (and breadth of reading) about social trends…..
Susan Strange	Casino Capitalism  (1986)	Strange helped create the discipline of International Political Economy and wrote superbly (another of her books is “Mad Money”
Lester Thurow	The Future of Capitalism – how today’s economic forces shape tomorrow’s world (1996)	Thurow was a remarkable leftist economist who had critiqued  the economics discipline in 1983 (in Dangerous Currents) and shook conventional thinking with this book

An obvious question is what criteria I used to pick less than 20 individuals from the tens of thousands (in the English language) who have written critically about what has been happening in our world. That’s not an easy question – since it begs a more basic one about how I came to remember these particular writers and titles from my reading of the past 40 years. Most of them are in my library here in the Carpathian mountains – with a few also from the internet…So the vagaries of recall are certainly a factor – as well as the selectivity of the unconscious which will push me away from dogmatic stuff…

And clarity of language is always a consideration 

Apart from the prescient books of the 1970s, what amazes me is the number of fascinating books which were appearing just before the millennium. We really seem to have been wasting the past 20 years….

The last few years, of course, have opened the floodgates of critical writing and the

 next post will bring the story up to date with another table…..

Brexit – and its different levels of “explanation”

There have been lots of theories about “How Brexit happened” with the “explanations” generally turning out (at least in the newspapers and journals) to be little more than superficial rationalisations than serious attempts to understand what drove voters to turn out (or not) and to decide to put their cross at the top rather than at the bottom of the ballot paper…The “explanations” have included –

- The alienation/distrust of those marginalised by deindustrialisation who have been given the rather derogatory designation of “Left Behinds”
- An interpretation robustly challenged by Danny Dorling and others who correctly pointed out that it was the older, more comfortably-off conservative voters who were Leave enthusiasts
- A 25 year campaign of hostility to the EU by the tabloids – ably assisted by a maverick Daily Telegraph journalist, one BoJo. The resulting Euroscepticism is well mapped in an article “Not European Enough” (2019)

- A dramatic rise in net immigration to the UK since 2000 with results mapped in “a tangled web” 2019

- The silence of the Labour party in the campaign - giving Conservatives the freedom to be active in both the Leave and Remain campaigns

-  The  unimaginative nature of the Remain campaign – whose economic threats were seen as counterproductive

The researchers, of course, have been active – but few of their studies have surfaced in the media most of which have adopted their own particular “narrative” of the referendum result and are more interested to cover the never-ending pantomime of Brexit politics. There is, of course, one other “gatekeeper” between academia and the public namely Think Tanks which, however, focus on future policies and not on historical research.

So ordinary citizens are left on their own to google key terms and try to identify readable results of the research on voter motivation in the 2016 referendum. One of the best of these Brexit – understanding the socio-economic causes and consequences (2016) – appeared  remarkably quickly

You will notice that some of the research material resulting from that google search is very recent (2019) but I have just been reading a book which was written 2 years ago - The Lure of Greatness – England’s Brexit, America’s Trump; Anthony Barnett (2017) which I find the best analysis of the issue.

Written in Barnett’s special style which bursts with insights and references and therefore comes in at 370 pages - with each of its 34 chapters having an almost self-explanatory title such as “Jailbreak”, “The four breaches of trust”, “Roll the Dice”, “It was England’s Brexit”, “Big Britishness”, “The Legitimacy of the EU” and “No Left to Turn To”.

It is one of these rare books that you realise half-way through that you need to go back and read more closely – not only underlining (in my case in different colours) but making copious notes about….Indeed, for the first time ever, I transcribed my first set of comments into a larger notebook - partly for some of the one line quotes, partly the better to follow the argument….Barnett was the moving force behind Charter 88 and has a bit of a hobbyhorse about constitutional issues which I don’t find easy to follow..

Let me, very briefly, try to do justice to his book. He starts it by suggesting that if there is one symbol to represent the modern world it is that of the prison - with surveillance everywhere and everyone

“trapped by the way voting and its outcomes are bought, corrupted, manipulated, spun by the PR industry and calibrations of costly marketing analytics” and then arguing that

“Brexit (and Trump) are attempts at mass breakout from the marketised incarceration of contemporary corporate democracy”

The breaches of trust which have sown the dragon seeds of public distrust and sullen anger in the US and the UK are 
- first the 2003 Iraq invasion itself in the face of massive protest (which offended the liberals); 
- the subsequent destruction affecting the Middle East as a whole which was ultimately proved to have been a disaster (offending the right - which had been expecting victory and “greatness”)

- The global financial meltdown was the third breach of trust 
- and the corporate greed it revealed was the final breach (arfuably started by the parliamentary expenses scandal) . 

Many of us thought that the third breach of trust would not only lead to a rethink about globalisation but to the birth of a more balanced model - and it was Colin Crouch’s The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism which alerted us in 2011 that Neoliberalism was still very much alive and kicking…. Barnett puts it very eloquently –

“A democratic warming that began on the left but only became a hurricane capable of taking power after picking up force in the warm waters of the right”

He goes on to suggest that the attraction of Brexit was what he calls the “jailbreak factor” – “the experience of democracy being so confining that any offer to escape was attractive”. It’s noticeable that Remainers cited mainly economic factors for their vote (75%) whereas Leavers discounted the economic, having just 2 major concerns – ending EU decision-making and immigration. Remainers were focused on the future, Leavers on the past…..

Although Barnett was a Remainer, he is pretty savage about the EC dishonesty around the Lisbon Treaty and has a great quote about the campaign –

The UK (although he correctly argued that it was actually England) walked out of Europe on two Big British Eurosceptic boots – one marked Leave, the other Remain

He later emphasises that both Leave and Remain were run by right-wing sects – with the Labour party sulking in the undergrowth – their slogans about the future being indistinguishable, “global Britain” in one case, “world Britain” in the other….I  kid you not! I’ll finish with one final quote –

“the Brexiteers have abandoned a very ambitious but achievable aim of growing like Germany within the EU for the fantastical ambition of growing even faster while outside it”

Brexitannia (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DzbctACZWY is a far more thoughtful film of an almost sociological depth based on about 200 in-depth interviews the length and breadth of the country and including commentaries. It’s reviewed here by Zero Anthropology

"Inside Europe - 10 years of turmoil" (2019) the BBC documentary referred to in the opening

Resources
Brexit Geographies – 5 provocations; (2018) Looks a good analysis 

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/explaining-brexit/

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/CSI-Brexit-4-People%E2%80%99s-Stated-Reasons-for-Voting-Leave.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5856072/pdf/PIRS-97-117.pdf

https://blog.usejournal.com/brexit-a-detailed-summary-of-what-the-hell-is-going-on-for-my-american-friends-61c92b04d9f7

http://natcen.ac.uk/media/1319222/natcen_brexplanations-report-final-web2.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/13/brexit-boris-johnson-parliament-written-constitution

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35620/ttr-2018-special-brexit.pdf

https://www.eurozine.com/explaining-brexit/?pdf

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/author/theo-veenkamp/

https://adamtooze.com/2017/03/02/notes-global-condition-mapping-debate-around-left-behind-white-working-class/

https://braveneweurope.com/2337-2 youtube

ttps://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/on-anthony-barnett-s-lure-of-greatness/

High Drama in the Commons

Quite remarkable scenes in the House of Commons as the government's suspension of Parliament is subjected to challenge. There's still another hour or so before the parliamentarians are unceremoniously booted out of Westminster by the Government - and the country loses its democracy for the next 5 weeks.....
The session started with the high-profile Speaker of the House of Commons - John Bercow - announcing, to everyone's amazement, that he will stand down at the end of next month – regardless of what happens with any “vote of confidence” in the Government later this evening.

If ever there was one person who epitomised the modern UK drama it has been Bercow, nominally a Conservative MP…..With political, personal and even marital issues, he has embodied the human side of an institution which had almost lost public trust. He has taken the side of ordinary MPs and of those who wanted to challenge the traditional ways of doing things in this most English of institutions…..Above all he has opened up the House in an amazing variety of ways - in matters of recruitment and access.

He has shown the difference a single person can make in life........ If Brexit has been about anything, it has been about parliamentary sovereignty - and he has struggled manfully to assert that principle

Readers know that I never comment on “breaking News” but, for once, I feel this warrants breaking that rule…..of course, a part of me suspects it is part of the the “Great Game” which the English find so entertaining
The tributes to Bercow were very moving and almost brought tears to my eyes. Very noticeable was the emptiness on the Government benches (about 20 as far as I could see compared with the hundreds on the Opposition benches!!). 

And the government continued, throughout the two subsequent debates, to treat the House with contempt - bringing only a couple of Ministers in at the last moment to answer the various points made......

Is this a Coup d’Etat?

Quite astonishing that this question apparently is now the heated topic of conversation the length and breadth of the benighted land I once knew as home….with some people in little doubt that the five-week suspension of Parliament which starts next week is precisely that – and the government arguing, on the other hand, that it is a routine affair…    

These, of course, are very uncivil times in which emotional and insulting words are too casually thrown around. “Words”, however, “are important – they are all we have…..”

Some words have a precise meaning which can be undermined when used as an insult….which is perhaps what Napoleon meant when he apparently said

“Why and how are words so important that they cannot be too often used”.

Fascist is one recent example (although, for me, all adjectives ending in “ist” run this danger). TS Eliot put it best when he wrote….

“Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.”

Thinking before we act or speak is always advisable…   Parents used to advise their teenage kids to “bite their tongue” after blurting out a questionable remark….but that probably shows my age…

So my first reaction is that talk of a “coup” is not all that helpful.

Wikipedia’s entry for "prorogation" is quite useful. I certainly had no recollection of John Major having used it mid March 1997 to avoid having to answer questions about the “cash for questions” affair – leading to New Labour’s election 6 weeks later…

But a lot of people have a vague memory of its use by Charles I in the 17^th century – leading to a certain event known as the English Civil War…

But, normally, the “prorogation” (or suspension) of Parliament is a routine matter lasting a few days….But there is something called the “Party Conference Season” – the 4 week period at the end of September and beginning of October when the British political parties hold their Annual Conferences.

So, technically, it is true that the prorogation adds only a few days to what, otherwise, would have been a normal parliamentary recess…..

But these, patently, are not normal times. And it has been all too easy for “Remainers” to paint the abnormally long period of prorogation as a denial of government accountability….

There are at least 2 blogs which focus entirely on constitutional issues and it is interesting to see what they have been saying. The Constitution Unit has had only one post on the question – to which its answer is very clear…it’s “improper” and should be reversed.

UK Constitutional Law has a more varied response…. And, of course, the two legal appeals so far made against the prorogation have failed – with the Supreme Court making the final decision in a week or so…

So for those of a betting nature, I would simply remind them that the government generally has the inside track…..

Update; Andrew Rawnsley of the Observer is always good for a reflective Sunday piece on the week’s politics in the UK which tries to look round all the corners…Today’s also suggests that resignation is on the cards

pps; How naive I am to complain about loose language. My blog hits have in the past week limped along at under 100 a day. Until the weekend when they first went to 500 and have in past 24 hours hit the 1000 mark......proof (if I really needed it) that it pays to use extreme language!!
ppps A very good balanced analysis from a public admin Prof with echoes of Jim Callaghan’s famous question  can be read here

Johnson's Real Game?

Blogposts zap into cyberspace and rarely get a response.
Boffy’s Blog is one of blogs I recommend on my blogroll and is run by someone who clearly sleeps with one eye open!

I feel privileged that he has taken the trouble to correct/update my last post with no fewer than two comments which I am happy to bring to my readers’ attention in a proper manner – with the relevant hyperlinks thrown in as a bonus…….  

You have missed Johnson’s real nuclear option – to which I drew attention in my post of 3 September – and that is to wait until October 17th, having spent five weeks attacking (those who deny Brexit and) the cowardice of the opposition who refuse to fight an election…….then simply resign rather than ask for an extension.

He knows the opposition is comprised of an unprincipled rabble with no concept of strategy, and wholly consumed by concern for immediate parliamentary tactics - what Lenin called “parliamentary cretinism” - and their own party interests. The Liberals have said again they will not vote to make Corby Prime Minister as head of the rabble alliance. Labour cannot possibly support anyone other than Corbyn without destroying itself.

When the rabble alliance collapses, unable to form an alternative government, this results automatically in the General Election that Johnson wants, because they only have 14 days after he resigns to do so.

He goes into the election looking principled and able to restore order, they go into it looking like the unprincipled, disorganised, squabbling rabble they actually are.

Labour's Brexit position always shaky has disintegrated again on contact with the battlefield. It now appears to be that a Labour Government would negotiate its own fantasy Brexit deal, then it would put it, along with remain to a new referendum, and in that referendum, it would then argue for a Remain vote, against its own deal that it had just wasted time negotiating.

You really could not make this nonsense up, and that indicates that the rabble alliance really do not have a clue, which is why, unfortunately, Johnson is likely to win.

This is indeed highly plausible….My thanks to Boffy for taking the trouble of drawing it to everyone’s attention. That, so far, no one else has taken up that idea is indeed a sad reflection on the British commentariat!

Update; Despite appearances, Johnson is no fool…and has revealed a ruthlessness in the past week which few had expected. In removing the whip from 21 Conservative MPs (and effectively removing the chances of their surviving as MPs in any future election), he has cleared the decks of dissenting voices and warned the remaining Tory MPs to be in no doubt of the consequences of any disloyalty to his line….

And, in the latest explosive news, a senior Minister of his has just resigned with a massive attack on his leadership for “political vandalism”.

The same story also confirms that Johnson is also this weekend considering placing a simple motion of “No Confidence” before the House and whipping Conservative MPs to support it. 

Of course, he doesn’t seem to have the votes for it any more – and the Speaker may well rule it out of order (on the basis presumably that it repeats last week’s failed motion) 

But if that is the way he goes in the next 36 hours, then it would clearly demonstrate that Boffy is right....and that his first act on October 17th will be to resign. 

My hunch is that he will not want to show his hand too soon.....and that he will not therefore seek a "No Confidence" vote on Monday

Update; The Constitution Unit blog had this post a couple of weeks ago https://constitution-unit.com/2019/08/23/might-boris-johnson-try-to-call-an-election-sooner-than-people-think/#more-8307

British PM threatens to defy the Law?

After two posts on “Life and Death” issues, it pains me greatly to find myself returning to UK politics and Brexit. And I do so only to help answer the questions of my non-UK readers who form the bulk of this blog’ readership.

Yesterday saw the House of Lords confirm the earlier House of Commons vote which seems to make a “No Deal” exit from the EU illegal. Logically this would require the Prime Minister to seek from the EU an extension to the deadline of 31 October. He has, however, apparently indicated that he will not seek such an extension – thereby putting himself as PM in the remarkable position of being in contempt of the law
And the Commons also denied Johnson’s attempt to force a General election - with opposition leaders confirming they would vote down the further attempt he is rumoured to be seeking on Monday. It is, after all, their last day before he (with the Queen's gracious permission) "suspends" them (for 6 weeks). The mind boggles!

I thought the flowchart in this recent article was complicated – until I saw the various options presented by this specialist in EU politics.

The BBC flowchart seems to be simpler - although I don’t quite understand their comment that a simple motion with a specific date for an election would require only a simple majority since that is surely ruled out by the “Fixed Term Parliament Act” of 2011 (which requires a 2/3 majority)

But it was public admin academic Colin Talbot who put the issue most pithily in this blogpost

What if the Government tables a motion for a General Election under the terms of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act?

This requires a two-thirds majority of all MPs – whether present and voting or not. That’s 434 MPs. They have already tried it once and failed. It’s unlikely to succeed when they try again on Monday. After that Parliament is going to be Prorogued (suspended) so it will be impossible before it resumes in Oct.

What if the Government brings forward a one-line Bill to suspend the Fixed Term Parliaments Act and call a General Election?

The Government could do this and try and fix a date that meant the GE could not stop Brexit happening on 31 Oct. They would need a majority, which they don’t have. It would be open to amendment, which could negate what they are trying to do.

What if the House of Commons passes a vote of No Confidence, in the terms stipulated by the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, next week?

This, quite uniquely, would require the Government to move such a motion itself and puts the Opposition Parties in a dreadful quandary -  difficult to vote against it (and thus vote confidence in the Government), so it would pass. It only requires a simple majority.

This would trigger the 14-day period during which a General Election can only be averted by passing a motion of confidence in HM Government (who ever that might be by then).

Except Parliament would be suspended because it will be Prorogued. There would be no House of Commons to pass such a resolution. The clock would tick down and a General Election would be triggered after 14 days, probably after 1stOct. The PM can then fix that election for a date that means the UK will crash out of the EU on 31 Oct. There would appear to be nothing Parliament could do to stop it.

BUT, to do this the Government would have to pull this stunt whilst Parliament is still (just) sitting. If they did the reaction would likely be explosive. We could well see unprecedented moves to overturn Prorogation by the House of Commons appealing directly to the Queen? This would obviously create a huge constitutional crisis. Or Parliament could try and pass a Bill suspending the FTPA?

Of course, if the Government were voting No Confidence in themselves to try to force a General Election through this highly dubious route, it might not be seen as so bizarre for the Opposition to vote the other way? In these strange times, who knows?

What if The Prime Minister extends Prorogation?

It is perfectly possible for Boris Johnson to go back to the Palace and ask Her Majesty to extend Prorogation so Parliament does not re-assemble, and he cannot be challenged.

If he did something so blatant there could be push-back from the Palace, through the Courts, and even by the House of Commons doing something unheard of like re-assembling itself.

                     

A Scottish and English court have both upheld the Prime Minister’s right to suspend Parliament for 5 weeks but appeals will be heard in the Country’s Supreme Court in what is expected to be a 3 day hearing on 17 September. But in the meantime Parliament is muzzled and shackled…..so is the state of the UK this day of the Lord 7 September 2019

The irresistible rise of the "Wrinklies"

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully” Samuel Johnson

There certainly seems to be an added edge to the prose of writers who, whether for scientific or personal reasons, turn their attention to old age and the prospect of one's life ending.

I last blogged on the subject all of three years ago and a recent conversation with one of my daughters has moved me to have another look at the dozen or so books on this topic on my bookshelves – and to track down a few for inclusion in the virtual library. So the core of this post is actually an analysis of the 20 or so books I know on the subject – inspired also, I suspect, by my reading last week of the very poetic “My Father’s Wake”

Given the rise in both numbers and purchasing power of the “Wrinklies”, it is perhaps surprising that we have not attracted more innovation (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) – in fields such as housing, euthanasia and burial, let alone politics….

We do need to give more thought to how we will leave this life - but we fail to do so….both as individuals and collectively…Perhaps the title I’ve been using for one unfinished set of collected thoughts – “Dispatches to the Next Generation” – is one small gesture in that direction. Of course its focus on the mess we in the older generation have made of the world makes for a completely different sort of book than those analysed below. The hyperlinks generally give useful reviews - and sometimes the book itself...

Books about Ageing and the approach of Death

Title	Year	Genre	Comment	Links
The American Way of Death; Jessica Mitford	1963	journalism	Analysis of the crematorium business	Her updated version of 1996 can be read in full here
On Death and Dying; Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross click to get the entire book	1969	psychology	The book that gave us the “five stages of grief”	This extended interview with the author is quite superb
The Coming of Age; Simone de Beauvoir	1970 French version	Breaks all disciplinary barriers!	The classic	Excerpts available on this Amazon version
The Denial of Death; Ernest Becker	1973	Cultural anthropology	A “psycho-philosophical synthesis” – all 330 pages	Hyperlink on title gives full book
The Loneliness of The Dying by Norbert Elias	1985	sociology	A short rather general book by an underrated Anglo-German	Note on his life and work. Click title for full book
The End of Age – BBC Reith Lectures by Tom Kirkwood	2001	Gerontology	Link on the title gives podcasts	Recent book review by Tom Kirkwood
Ammonites and Leaping Fish – a Life in Time Penelope Lively	2003	Memoir	Interview here	First chapter can be read in summary form here
Nothing to be Frightened Of; Julian Barnes	2007	Extended essay	Good on references	A rather gentle way into the subject nicely reviewed here
Somewhere Towards the End; Diana Athill	2008	Memoir	Marvellous writer covers latter stages of a long life	Click the title for the entire book
The Long Life; Helen Small	2007	Literary	Written by a Professor of English language and literature	Compendium of writing about ageing over 2000 years. A good review here
You’re Looking very well – the surprising nature of getting old; Lewis Wolpert	2011	Popular science	Professor of Biology Age 80 when he wrote it Good interviews here and here	got stick from this reviewer for having too many facts and quotations and insufficient analysis
“Immortality: the Quest to Live For Ever and How It Drives Civilisation” Stephen Cave	2012	philosophy	Philosopher who knows how to tell a great tale	Click on title for full book good review here
Out of Time – the Pleasures and Perils of Ageing; Lynne Segal	2013	sociology	Almost an update of de Beauvoir!	Good review here
Being Mortal – illness, medicine and what matters in the end; by Atul Gawande	2015	Reflective medical	a very literate and humane American surgeon,	See comments in Intimations of Mortality and Facing up to our Mortality
Growing Old – the last Campaign; Des Wilson	2014	Humour	was the most famous British campaigner of the second half of the century.
The Black Mirror: Fragments of an Obituary for Life; Raymond Tallis	2015	philosophy	retired British gerontologist, poet and polymath	See this Spiked Online review
The Worm at the Core: on the Role of Death in Life; by S Solomon, J Greenberg and T Pyszczynski	2015	psychology	American psychologists update and popularise Becker’s thesis about our repression of death	see this interview British philosopher John Gray reviewed
“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: and Other Lessons from the Crematorium” Caitlin Doughty	2015	journalism		Review here
My Father’s Wake – how the Irish Teach us to Live, Love and Die; Kevin Toolis	2017	journalism	Poetic but doesn’t deal with issues
With the end in mind – dying, death and wisdom in an age of denial; K Mannix	2017	medical	A “palliative” doctor profiles in depth her patients	A review here
The Way we Die Now; Seamus O’Mahony	2017	medical	A Consultant “Gastroenterologist”

Every Third Death – life, death and the endgame; Robert McCrum

2017

Literary journalist

An extended essay – with a nice little bibliography