Francis Mulhern

Apr 5, 2024 | versobooks.com | Melissa Benn |Stefan Collini |Francis Mulhern

These are desperate times in the UK higher education system. Every week there are closures of degrees or departments, and sizeable redundancies. Disproportionately it is the arts, humanities and social sciences that are affected, a consequence of their downgrading in recent years. The frequency with which common-sense opinion pieces in the tabloid press have questioned (and often ridiculed) the value of the liberal education prepares the ground for so many of these cuts.

Dec 14, 2023 | newleftreview.org | Francis Mulhern

The matter of national sovereignty was the clamorous stake in the 2016 referendum on the uk’s membership of the European Union. For the Leavers, whose rhetorical dynamism was unflagging, even in the midst of all the warnings of economic dislocation and slump, the struggle was one for rebirth, a reassertion of British independence in the face of an overbearing Brussels superstate and the launch of a recharged ‘Global Britain’.

Aug 4, 2023 | versobooks.com | Francis Mulhern |Fredric Jameson

In reading, as in writing, the pleasure principle is supreme. The authors you would most wish to save from a fire, or take with you to a desert island would be those that most consistently deliver exhilaration. These writers speak to you with an immediacy and intimacy that make you feel like their ideal reader, the person for whom the work is intended. And in turn, you defy anyone to love them as much as you do.

Aug 4, 2023 | versobooks.com | Francis Mulhern

In reading, as in writing, the pleasure principle is supreme. The authors you would most wish to save from a fire, or take with you to a desert island would be those that most consistently deliver exhilaration. These writers speak to you with an immediacy and intimacy that make you feel like their ideal reader, the person for whom the work is intended. And in turn, you defy anyone to love them as much as you do.