The Politics of Dancing

Curious this obsession by the regressive left with International Law, indeed what one might call the fetishizing of, what is often in truth little more than the Russian and Chinese veto on the UN Security Council. Now the clique who head up the Stop the War (sic) Coalition do not of course view the rule of law as a sacred principle, being ‘leftists’ how could they? Would they denounce Trade Unionists for breaking anti trade union laws, or refugees for entering the country illegally? [1] Of course they would not and would have a strong moral case for supporting defiance of such laws. Civil disobedience having a long and respectable tradition on the left. Still there is a strong case to be made for supporting the concept of International Law, even if in practice its implementation proves flawed, inconsistent and unjust. Some rules being better than none at all. Though one only has to examine the existing framework of international law to see its innate conservatism and that it prot...

I suppose that 44 years represents a substantial enough period between television adaptations of Tolstoy’s literary masterpiece. These adaptations, which it has now become critically de-rigueur to giggle at, is what the BBC does best. [1]   However, Jack Pullman’s 1972 adaptation set the bar extremely high, and even after 44 years, it is still available on DVD, casts a very long shadow. Given its length War & Peace lends itself far better to TV adaptation than to film, with the action comfortably moulded into six to nine episodes. Attempts to bring it to the big screen have been abysmal. At this point, as parliamentarians are obliged to point out, I must declare an interest. I read War and Peace when I was sixteen, and read it whilst watching The Pullman adaptation, thus for me Alan Dobie will always be Andrey Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, Morag Hood, Natasha Rostova and Anthony Hopkins Pierre Bezhuhov. Reading the book was one of the great literary moments of my life. So...