Welcome to the Brian Micklethwait Archive. We are slowly adding writings to this site. For progress on this see the news section.

  • Even as Monty was winning his battles, strictly according to plan, other thin, brainy, persuasive persons were to be seen in the cinema prophecying a planned peacetime economy...

    Monty and the Myth of The Unshakeable Plan
    1992

  • Any group evil enough to believe in “justly acquired property” is plainly a collection of reactionary Thatcherite monsters.

    Liberty Versus Democracy
    1983

  • If people are, in effect, giving something away, they are all too likely just to slap it down in front of you on a take-it-or-leave-it, whatdid-you-expect-at-this-price basis, rather than serve it up properly. Maybe there are free lunches to be had, but there is an automatic tendency for you to get only what you have paid for.

    The Magic of a Price Rise
    1991

  • ...until some other common European enemy arises, the notion that there will soon — still less “inevitably” — be a United States of Europe to rival the United States of America can be set to one side as one of those great historical might-have-beens.

    The End of the Cold War and the New European and British Disuinionism
    1995

  • Many Conservatives favour rent acts, minimum wage laws, taxes on low pay and so on, because like their political opponents they consider these things to be “compassionate” and “caring”, instead of utterly wicked.

    Doing Something About Unemployment
    1983

Archives

Latest Update

Blog archives added

I have now added static archive versions of Brian’s old blogs to this site.

They are linked from the front page, and currently include the culture and education blogs from 2003 to 2008, and Brian’s personal blog from 2005 to 2019.

There is another blog, Brian Micklethwait’s New Blog, that I am hoping to archive later.

The aim is to preserve the original look and internal navigation of these blogs while making them easy to browse from within the archive site.

Highlights

In this video, Steve Baker MP recounts how Brian introduced him to books about freedom.

On 25th January 2020 Mal McDermott interviewed Brian Micklethwait on the subject of the history of the libertarian movement in Britain.

Elsewhere

Here is a collection of other places on the internet where you may find writings by Brian.

Video