Professional regulation in an age of anxiety.

This paper was given as the ‘distinguished guest lecture’ at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, 2016. The title is taken from the poem by WH Auden written during the second world war.

‘In our comfortable western European lives we are now beset with anxieties; terrorism of course, financial uncertainty, our children's safety whether walking to school or on-line, foods that cause cancer, pandemics, allergies to nuts or wheat or milk, global warming, economic migrants, refugees from war, the enemy without and the enemy within. We are healthier than humanity has ever been, we live longer than any generation before us but we are constantly anxious about illness and death.’