Daniel Swift

Fierce indignation

The brilliant satirist was a mass of contradictions, but his blistering ‘Modest Proposal’ is as pertinent today as it ever was

issue 29 October 2016

In an autobiographical note written late in his life, Jonathan Swift set down an astonishing anecdote from his childhood. When he was a baby in Dublin, he was put into the care of an English wet nurse, and one day she heard that one of her relatives back in England was close to death.

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