1 February

Mark Davis, talking about Hannah Arendt and why she was sceptical of the value of political protest. Arendt of course being another person who lived under the Nazis, and who wrote about the 'banality of evil', replacing the big goodies and baddies frameworks we usually use with a series of mundane acts: "Certainly, I think there is a lot to be gained from people gathering together to show solidarity. But in a world where the institutions that we’re protesting in front of are losing their legitimacy and their power, I’m not sure that this has the impact that it once did. If we think of evil as this one person, this one big event, then we tend to want to match that with one big display of resistance. But actually, if evil is banal – a set of ordinary, mundane decisions day by day – then maybe we have to start living differently day by day.”