Comment
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Is justice served by these tales of beheading?
Nick Cohen
Sunday February 4, 2007
The Observer
Nick Cohen: Writing from London
Journalism from London.
Journalism from London.
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“Nick Cohen’s brilliant broadside against censorship in an age of freedom.” Richard Dawkins
"Nick Cohen’s books are like the best Smiths songs; however depressing the content, the execution is so shimmering, so incandescent with indignation that the overall effect is uplifting." Julie Burchill Prospect
"He has a sense of history and literature, in contrast to the dominant political generation of PPE graduates who have read every page of the Economist since they were at Oxford, but have never opened a novel." Denis MacShane, the Observer.
"At the risk of winning the Order of the Brown Nose, Cohen is perhaps the most insightful, thought-provoking and entertaining political writer in Britain today, and comes from the honest tradition of English liberal thought that threads from John Milton to John Stuart Mill and George Orwell; for that reason he has fallen out with the dishonest liberal tradition, a split that began with the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie on Valentine’s Day, 1989. He has that rare trait of being fair to all parties, refreshing in the tribal atmosphere of political debate, which has no doubt angered sectarians on his side." Ed West, The Telegraph
"Cohen is a friendly and engaging writer, who combines the solitary scholar’s extraordinary range of reference with a bon-vivant wit and warmth. A lover of contemporary fiction, his polemics read like novels. He finishes his book with a list of ways to fight back."Max Dunbar 3am Magazine
"The author has no time for artists, comedians and "loud-mouthed newspaper columnists" who pose as the moral equivalents of dissenters in repressive regimes, as they fearlessly speak truth to power, knowing that power will never go after them. On more delicate matters, meanwhile, they preserve a cowardly or self-interested silence. Cohen is a political animal, but with this free-thinking man of the Left there is no sense of the hedging, elisions or contrarian games so familiar in the field. A nose for censorship, of the silent or bullying variety, means not just carrying a powerful bullshit detector, which he does, but being your own man. And God knows there are few enough of those."
George Walden, London Evening Standard
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Reviews
"Cohen’s forcefully argued and powerfully memorable book...the psychology of the left wing is hauntingly displayed." Spectator
"Cohen’s book is an admirable example of self- criticism and self-examination, using intellectual honesty as a means of illuminating a much wider canvas. Do not feel that you have to be a leftist or liberal to read it, because it engages with an argument that is crucial for all of us, and for our time.
Sunday Times
"Nick Cohen's roaring polemic of outrage against the moral and political crisis of the liberal tradition. It is already one of the most discussed current affairs books of the new year. At the very least it forces, or ought to force, anyone on the left to think carefully about where their movement has ended up in the modern world." Guardian
"Nick Cohen, whose book What’s Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way appears next month. If it does not have a profound effect on the political debate, I will be surprised and disappointed. It is an essay of wide reference and great brilliance." <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99b39c62-a180-11db-8bc1-0000779e2340.html" Financial Times
"This book is much more than a mere denunciation of old left-wing friends and colleagues. It is also a moving account of a long personal journey, carried off with wit, verve, considerable literary skill and human compassion." Observer
Nick Cohen
