The centenary of the Russian Revolution is an opportunity to restore the reputation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Harvard Commencement Address, 1978

(This is an article written for the next edition of The Salisbury Review.) When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn rose to deliver his Commencement Address at Harvard University in June, 1978, he was arguably the world’s leading cultural figure: a globe-bestriding literary giant in the tradition of Tolstoy; an implacable, grim-faced Old Testament prophet in the mould of Jeremiah; a heroic, seemingly indestructible truth-teller who survived imprisonment, exile and cancer to bear witness to the horrors that ensue whenever Communism is put into practice.

Arise, Sir Roger! - the award of a knighthood to Roger Scruton shines out like a good deed in a naughty world

Sir Roger Scruton

I suffered a moment of confusion while scanning the knighthood recipients in the Queen's 90th. Birthday Honours list when I saw the name of Angus Deaton among them. The coke-sniffing, two-at-a-time sex romping former Have I Got News for You? presenter? Had he, I wondered, done a Profumo by devoting himself to good works in order to atone for past transgressions? He might very well have done, but it turned out to be a professor at Princeton, whose name is spelled slightly differently.  Anyway, my friend David Moss reminded me - in a comment on a post I'd written about our old university supervisor, Roger Scruton, in 2011 - that I'd concluded it with a bold (some might say rash) promise. Responding to Scruton's claim that "it’s still possible to gain a vision, to stand on a little peak - perhaps not the peak on which Spinoza stood, or Plato, but a peak of one’s own -  and look across at all this sea of ignorance and confusion and hysteria… and smile at it", I wrote:

"That Bloody Woman" - my review of the second volume of Margaret Thatcher's biography for The Salisbury Review

I posted some remarks about Charles Moore's book on January 16th, but here's the full version, which has just been published in the Spring edition of The Salisbury Review.  For anyone who doesn't already subscribe, you should do so immediately in order to read "In the Tattooist's Parlour", a fascinating article by a former factory worker and tattooist, Victoria Sweetwater, about what life (her life) is like in one of this country's bedraggled Northern multicultural dystopias. It's startling to read an account of the tensions between working-class whites, Asians and Poles not written by someone who sounds like a visiting anthropologist observing primitive tribes in their natural (or unnatural) environment. Ms Sweetwater (presumably an alias, but it would nice if it wasn't) was apparently a left-winger until she came across The Salisbury Review. Meanwhile, here's my Thatcher review:

Reading Christopher Lasch's "The Revolt of the Elites" just went to the top of my "to do" list

I don't know why I didn't read it when it first came out in 1996, as I'd enjoyed Lasch's earlier The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations enough to read it twice. But, for a variety of reasons, 1996 and 1997 (when I presume the paperback came out) were particularly busy years for me, and I probably wasn't up to reading anything quite as intellectually challenging back then. Today, though, I came across some quotes from The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy in an excellent 2013 article by Ed West (most of Ed West's articles are excellent) that now seem jaw-droppingly prescient. At certain times, certain thinkers just seem to be directly dialled into the Zeitgeist: Lasch certainly was twenty years ago. Here's some evidence:

"Mrs Thatcher is the point at which all snobberies meet" - why she drove the snobby Left round the twist

Possibly the best chapter in the magnificent second volume of Charles Moore’s three-volume biography of Margaret Thatcher (The Authorized Biography, Volume Two: Everything She Wants) is the penultimate one, “What they saw in her”, in which he examines the Left’s reaction to the Member for Finchley during her second term as Prime Minister (1983-87). According to Charles Clarke, who was Neil Kinnock’s Chief of Staff in the ‘80s, “Margaret Thatcher’s greatest strength was our uselessness.” Their uselessness took a very specific form: an utter inability to understand or even to examine the reasons for Mrs Thatcher’s extraordinary electoral success. Convinced of her wickedness, they thought that “they only had to point this out loudly enough and voters would desert the Conservatives.” Moore goes on, “Never… did they coldly analyse why she was winning, in order to ensure that she would lose.”

A Political Fan Dance - a review of Roger Mosey's "Getting Out Alive: News, Sport & Politics at the BBC"

The following review is from the Winter 2015 issue of The Salisbury Review:

This could have been a fascinating book. Roger Mosey was a key member of the short-lived BBC Director-General George Entwistle’s crisis management team - its “Gold Commander”, no less - in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal and Newsnight’s disastrous libelling of Lord McAlpine; and early publicity for “Getting Out Alive” suggested that it might offer confirmation of whispers I had heard during my time at the BBC that Mosey was “a bit of a Tory”.

I may have to soften my attitude to the late Denis Healey - no John Franklin Bardin enthusiast can be all bad

Uncle Joe’s Hollywood Army - a review of Allan H. Ryskind's "Hollywood Traitors"

Regular readers of this blog (and, yes, there are some, believe it or not) will probably have realised by now that the infiltration of Hollywood by ardent Communists during its Golden Age is a subject which interests me to the point of obsession - mainly because present-day denizens of The Dream Factory (as Michael Parkinson always insisted on calling it) keep treating those vile traitors as if they were heroes. I've written a review of a recent book on the topic for the next issue of The Salisbury Review. Allan H. Ryskind's Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters -- Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler, Regnery Publishing Inc, is available in hardover and ebook formats here. My review of it is available below:

The Age of Infantilism, Part One: are we a nation of Big Babies?

One of my favourite bathroom books is Michael Bywater’s Big Babies: Why Can’t We Just Grow Up?, first published in 2006. Practically everything that has happened in the eight years since I first read the book has borne out its arguments. Here’s a lengthy segment:

I imagine myself to be a grown-up, as, presumably, do you. You think that because you negotiated puberty and developed secondary sexual characteristics, and got qualifications and opened a bank account and subjected yourself to the scrutiny of anti-terrorism laws and anti-money-laundering laws and learned to drive and got a job and perhaps a spouse and maybe children, and quite possibly even pay your taxes, you are a grown-up.

The 35 left-liberal swine who signed a letter to PEN protesting against an award to Charlie Hebdo

If David Cameron hadn’t proven himself so adept at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, I’d be predicting a narrow overall Tory majority next week. I still think they might do it, especially if Ed Miliband keeps reminding voters why they despise Labour by indulging in such suicidally stupid activities as hobnobbing with anuses like Russell Brand and promising to make Islamophobia a crime. Islamophobia – at least, as it will be defined by Labour’s Islingtonian gauleiters - strikes me as a rather reasonable blanket response to a religion which despises democracy, freedom of thought, women, homosexuals and Jews, and whose aim is to impose itself on the rest of the world, with or without our permission. A Western liberal would need a lobotomy in order not to be creeped out by that little list.

As another wave of fascist thugs threatens our freedom, it's time to revive Karl Popper's reputation as a political philosopher of genius

I've just finished this article for the next edition of The Salisbury Review. I mentioned that I was writing it in my piece on "Is this all the fault of Islam"  earlier this month (here). Back in 2012, I identified Popper as one of my four greatest 20th Century intellectual heroes (along with Wittgenstein, Hayek and Jung) in a blog about the importance of political and economic feedback (here). So I'm delighted to be doing something - no matter how nugatory - towards celebrating Popper's role as a great defender of liberty. His contribution to political philosophy appears to have been almost entirely airbrushed from history by left-wing academics, who apparently view him as a traitor to their cause. Well, sod 'em - Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FBA FRS was a brilliant, cantakerous, feisty, unclubbable, utterly honest fighter for truth and common sense: I'd love to have heard him on the issue of Islamofascism and the smiley-faced tyranny of the EU.

Libertarian classic: "The God of the Machine", Isabel Paterson's 1943 trumpet blast against the liberal fascism of the New Deal

Isabel Paterson

I wrote about Isabel Paterson's astonishing book in June 2012 (here), but that mainly consisted of one long quote, a few slapdash observations, and, besides, it was all mixed up with a review of a television series being broadcast at that time. I've now written what I hope is a proper appreciation of the great lady for the latest edition of The Salisbury Review, albeit under a pseudonym.  I'm not a libertarian, but I've read quite a few modern books on the subject, and none of them comes close to Paterson's masterpiece, which strikes me as the wellsprung of every libertarian - and many conservative and right-wing - works published since her bracing game-changer first appeared. If my article were available online, I'd link to it, but it isn't, so I've made it available here (God, that sounds pompous!):

Allegations that Gore Vidal was a paedophile have been ignored by the BBC and the Guardian

Funny that, because they couldn’t get enough of the old bugger when he was slagging off people and things they didn’t approve of  - e.g. George W. Bush (he wanted him impeached for war crimes – Bush's “junta” was apparently responsible for 9/11), business, America’s military-industrial complex, Ronald Reagan (too stupid to live, obviously), Britain (should have been turned into an historical theme park), the idea that most people are heterosexual etc. But when members of his own family make the sensational claim that Vidal – who died last year – was a paedophile, it apparently isn’t worth reporting. The Telegraph disagreed (full story here):

There's no such thing as an anti-establishment Lib-Dem – the only real ones are libertarians

Nick Clegg has just told the Lib-Dem conference that their party is anti-establishment. He did this with a straight face. Bigger government, less choice, more welfare recipients, higher taxes, handing more power to Brussells, more expensive green power, no to a nuclear deterrent, yes to mass immigration… this is what Labour, the Guardian, the majority of our elected representatives, most people who work in local government, almost everyone employed by the state (especially the Civil Service), the vast majority of teachers and academics, and, of course, the BBC believe in. Together, they are the establishment. How does a passionate belief in all the failed liberal-left ideas of the 20th Century – to which all the above-named groups cleave - make posh little Nicky Clegg a rebel?

Would it be all right for a new Children’s Laureate to complain that there were too many blacks on book covers?

Britain’s new Children’s Laureate is the black writer, Malorie Blackman, who tells us: "There have only been seven previous winners so it's not like we are breaking a pattern of hundreds of years but it's a reflection of being bold and not being afraid of new ideas. This is the 21st century, after all. It should not be a big deal to have a black Children's Laureate in 2013. I'm just thrilled that they think I am up to the task. I hope my colour was incidental to the choice."

So now we know why liberals are strange – they don’t care about loyalty, authority or sanctity

I recently finished American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, and, so fascinating was it, I’ve been walking around in a bit of a daze ever since, mulling over his theories. Essentially, Haidt, trying to explain why US politics are currently so polarised, looks at the difference in moral outlook between the two sides: he concludes that right-wingers have broader moral foundations than their dirigiste opponents.

Being hectored by a left-wing Scottish lesbian on the M25

Val McDermid is a female crime writer. Yesterday she presented Pick of the Week on BBC Radio 4 (available here). Normally I wouldn’t dream of listening a programme hosted by a dour Scottish lesbian – life is far too short – but I was ferrying my son and two of his friends back to their university yesterday evening and, as I’d asked if they minded having the radio on, I didn’t want to admit I’d made a terrible mistake.

Books I'd rather suffer a sleepless night than read

I don't suppose I've gone to sleep without reading something before switching the light off more than 20 times in my life, usually after drunken parties in my younger days. Now, it would be an impossibility. My idea of hell would be to find oneself alone late at night in a foreign hotel room without even a Gideon Bible for solace. In those circumstances, I'd read almost any book ever published rather than not read anything at all. But there are exceptions to that rule - i.e. books I wouldn't read even if it meant a sleepless night. Here are a few of them:

Why is everyone rushing to praise the Marxist Eric Hobsbawm, an apologist for mass-murderers?

A "great" supporter of mass murderers

I'll admit to being perplexed by the sycophantic encomiums from all parts of the political spectrum being lavished on the Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm (or Frogspawn as I seem to remember he was known at Cambridge). I foolishly thought that right-wingers and conservatives would be united in their disdain for an academic who escaped Nazi oppression only to wind up claiming that, in order for communism to succeed, it would have been worth the death of 10 or 15 million people (as opposed to the minimum of a hundred million who actually died).

Did I miss the bit where J.K. Rowling became a member of the Royal Family?

Her Serene Highness

I ask, because it’s impossible to switch on the television or radio these days without hearing or seeing Ms Rowling being asked oleaginously respectful questions about her new novel in  the tones once reserved for questions about Budgie the Helicopter and The Old Man of Lochnagar. You could almost hear BBC Arts Correspondent Will Gompertz having to stop himself adding “Your Royal Highness” to each question when the woman was given four minutes of free advertising on the Lunchtime News today. (J.K. ended the interview with a friendly "Thanks, Will" - isn't that cosy?)