Liberal thought and thinkers
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Graham Wallas, 1858-1932
Graham Wallas was born in Sunderland on 31 May 1858, the son of an Evangelical clergyman of the Church of England who later became Rector of Shobrooke in Devon, where the young Wallas was brought up. He went to public school at Shrewsbury and thence to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he read Greats. Wallas…
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Ralf Dahrendorf (Lord Dahrendorf), 1929-2009
Writing in 1997, Ralf Dahrendorf referred to his favourite countries: Britain and Germany, and the Europe – even the Europe – to which they both belong; his commitment to public service, to academia, to politics and to liberalism has been visible in all of them. Born in Hamburg, that most anglophile of German cities, on…
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The New Liberalism
The disaster of the 1895 election, when the Liberals lost almost a hundred seats, struck a mortal blow at Rosebery's leadership and pointed to the urgent need for a new direction. Although for some it was the party's abandonment of its historic principles of self-help, voluntaryism and constitutional reform that lay at fault, to others…
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John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ 150 years later
An analysis of the most well-known work of the greatest of the Victorian Liberal philosophers, published 150 years ago this year, and an assessment of its relevance to 2009.
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Greatest of the Liberal philosophers
Review of Richard Reeves, John Stuart Mill, Victorian Firebrand (Atlantic Books, 2007).
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T. H. Green: Forgotten Liberal?
Arguments for T. H. Green as the greatest British Liberal.
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The development of the New Liberalism as a philosophy of transition
The philosophy that underpinned the Liberal Party’s revival in the 1906 election.
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Philosopher of freedom
Wilhelm von Humboldt and early German Liberalism.
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Adam Smith, 1723-1790
Adam Smith did for economic liberalism what John Locke had done for political liberalism, namely, to lay the philosophical foundations on which others would build a distinctive liberal tradition. Smith’s ideas, however, have permeated the western political tradition to the extent where not only liberals but also other contemporary schools of thought claim to be…