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Ian Gilmour

Ian Gilmour was secretary of state for defence under Edward Heath and deputy foreign secretary under Margaret Thatcher. He died on 21 September 2007.

From the London Review dated 20 October 2005

Vote for the Beast!

John Stuart Mill labelled the Conservatives ‘the stupid party’. They have certainly been stupid since 1997, and one wonders if their stupidity will persist. But a related and more interesting question is: ‘Are the Conservatives any longer a serious party?’ A serious party can be one of two things. It can, like the Greens, be concerned with only one issue or one group of issues. Its members are not hoping to form a government – they know they are never going to do that – but they believe the presence of some Greens in Parliament, Brussels and local government will help them publicise the issues they believe to be the most important and induce the government to do something about them. [ read more . . . ]

Selected bibliography

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In the LRB archive

Dingy Quadrilaterals · 19 October 2006

  • Bringing the House Down: A Family Memoir by David Profumo  Buy this book

Vote for the Beast! · 20 October 2005

subscriber-only content Little Mania · 19 May 2005

  • Lady Caroline Lamb by Paul Douglass

subscriber-only content Out of Bounds · 20 January 2005

  • The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period by William St Clair

subscriber-only content The other side have got one · 6 June 2002

  • Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the 20th Century by E.H.H. Green
  • Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World by Margaret Thatcher

subscriber-only content Sagest of Usurpers · 21 March 2002

  • Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity by Blair Worden

Little Mercians · 5 July 2001

subscriber-only content Termagant · 19 October 2000

  • The Cliveden Set: Portrait of an Exclusive Fraternity by Norman Rose

The Horrors of Heathrow · 19 March 1998

Not currently in the LRB archive

 not available in archive Fuss, Fatigue and Rage · 15 July 1999

  • George IV by E.A. Smith

 not available in archive Hauteur · 10 December 1998

  • This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair by Hugo Young

 not available in archive I could light my pipe at her eyes · 3 September 1998

  • Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
  • Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain by K.D. Reynolds
  • Lady Byron and Earl Shilton by David Herbert

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