Standpoint Magazine have published an essay by Daniel Johnson on Ernest Gellner in their "underrated" series (other recent subjects include Ian Duncan Smith and the Queen!). The article draws heavily on John A. Hall's "excellent" Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography.
It is a highly partial profile of Gellner, delighting in his criticisms of Ralph Miliband (recently dubbed "overrated" by the same author), Noam Chomsky and the “foolish” (according to Johnson, not Gellner) Edward Said. It also gives a predictably selective reading of Gellner's work on Islam to support the idea of an Islamic “threat”. However the article does inadvertantly highlight the complexity and originality of this impossible-to-pigeonhole intellectual, of whom the sociologist David Glass reportedly said that he
wasn't sure whether the next revolution would come from the right or from the left; but he was quite sure that, wherever it came from, the first person to be shot would be Ernest Gellner.
Visit Standpoint to read the article in full.
Avi Shlaim's Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations is Rafael Behr's Paperback of the week for the Observer. Behr picks up on a particularly modern expression of the conflict: PR.
Owen Hatherley's A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain has received its first reviews.
Rowan Moore, reviewing for the Observer, says that "Britain's appalling architectural legacy is laid bare in a savage critique argued with wit and bitterness."