I was idly leafing through Melanie Phillips’s latest book the other day. Called The World Turned Upside Down and written in her usual combative style, it examines the irrational notions that drive much of modern life. “Millions of people,” she writes, “...now appear only too eager to believe that the world is controlled by dark conspiracies of covert forces for which there is not one shred of evidence.” There are references to “the Bilderberg Group” and conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 among other examples of irrationality.