The last time I wrote for the LRB, I mentioned a speech made by Tim Collins, the then shadow education secretary, calling for a review of the teaching of history in schools. 'Nothing is more important to the survival of the British nation,' he had declared, 'than an understanding among its young of our shared heritage and the nature of the struggles, foreign and domestic, which have secured our freedoms . . . a nation which loses sight of its past cannot long expect to enjoy its future.' A Tory politician asking us to include among 'the national heroes of our past' those who had 'struggled to widen the franchise' - usually in the teeth, Collins did not add, of ruthless Tory opposition - was obviously too much (or so I choose to believe) for the electors of Westmorland and Lonsdale, who responded at the last election by making Collins one of the very few Tory MPs to lose his seat.

LRB 6 July 2006 | PDF Download