It’s that time of year. July – the middle of the calendar year – appears to mark the definitive end of each academic year.  The campus quietens; residences empty; you can book a room for a meeting or get a table in a campus café; one set of students’ union sabbatical officers gives way to…

Clausewitz famously maintained that war was the continuation of politics by other means. If the soccer World Cup had been around in the early nineteenth century, he would have worked football somewhere into his dictum. Almost every World Cup game is more than a sporting encounter: issues of national identity verging into national stereotypes, patriotic…

We take it for granted. It’s been described as the closest thing we have, now, to a national religion. It’s probably become politically untouchable. We have all either depended on it or had a family member or close friend who has depended on it.  It remains a tribute to the genuinely visionary political leadership of…