Eyewear is currently reading Blond's Red Tory, this new book that may or may not be Cameron's Third Way. In the meanwhile, let me say it is a pity the author doesn't seem to acknowledge he has not coined the phrase Red Tory at all - such progressive conservatism was de rigeur in Canada, for the PC party, for decades, and many great Canadian politicians have been called red Tories in their time. Blond does make a compelling case, as Eyewear often does, for a new space for values in British society, and calls the current State-Market nexus flattening - in the sense it leaves no community space for what used to be social good (as in Church groups, caring neighbours, genuine virtue, etc.). Blond is also good on the Broken Britain of young sex, young knives, and young drinking, where youth is bought and sold and marketed, cheapening everything.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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