Battle Readings is a regularly updated compilation of articles, essays, and opinion pieces relevant to the themes of the Battle of Ideas.
Choose a theme from the listing on the left to narrow your search, or view all readings.
Here's a mystery for you. Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots
Charlie Brooker, Guardian, 22 September 2006
Christopher Kelly, Oxford University Press, 24 August 2006
Bryan Ward-Perkins, Oxford University Press, 13 July 2006
Truly moderate Muslims are finding that the host community is cutting the ground from under their feet and delivering them into the hands of the extremists. This is a deliberate policy of riding the Islamist tiger. But those who ride a tiger may get eaten.
Melanie Phillips, The Times, 6 June 2006
The problem with the teaching of the past today is that it makes universalism history.
Neil Davenport, spiked, 4 June 2006
John Carey, Faber and Faber, 1 June 2006
Cinema remains the best place to experience the architectural imagination at full flight
Jonathan Glancey, Guardian, 21 May 2006
What is a good life: can science and medicine tell us?
"The energy, verve and enthusiasm at The Battle of Ideas filled me with hope. Coming from India where so many people still lack the basic necessities that make human life worth living, it was heartening to see basic issues of equity and justice debated with such passion and fervour."
George Thomas, orthopaedic surgeon; editor, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics