Growing up as a German kid in Britain in the Seventies and Eighties, one of the things that left a lasting impression on me during our annual visit to my German grandparents was sitting in the back of their Mercedes …
Boomer Europe is dying
Born in 1945, from the wreckage of its decades-long civil war, our mother continent Europe is a boomer, prone as many boomers are to comforting and self-aggrandising myths as it slouches towards death. Unlike the generation which led Europe through …
The liberal complacency of Martin Amis
English culture has produced a number of cliques and coteries in its day, from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Bloomsbury Group to Macspaunday (otherwise known as the Thirties poets Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden and Cecil Day Lewis). …
How Lee Rigby’s murder changed terrorism
Like a still from a cheap horror flick, Michael Adebolajo stands with a meat cleaver and a large knife clasped in one hand. His free hand, saturated in blood, is raised towards the camera. Together with his accomplice and fellow …
Hispanics are abandoning the Catholic Church
The Hispanic community in America is thought to be shaped by diehard Catholicism — in pop culture and politics alike. For over a century, Catholic Churches were a place of refuge for new migrants to the United States, who faced …
Is there anything left to conserve?
“The whole modern world”, wrote G.K. Chesterton, “has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.”
Welcome to 2023.
But what …
Britain needs more Stanley Baldwins
One day in the late Twenties, during his second spell as Prime Minister of the greatest imperial power on the planet, Stanley Baldwin fell into conversation with a stranger on a train. A stocky, pleasant-looking man in a tweed three-piece …
Martin Amis knew the horror of words
Years after I first read The Rachel Papers, I bought the copy of Hamlet that Martin Amis had owned as an Oxford student from a book dealer in Charing Cross. It had his undergraduate jottings in the margins and his …
How America weaponised the West
In the month that has passed since Emmanuel Macron issued his call for greater European strategic autonomy, two rival camps have gone to battle over its legacy. The first is populated by Atlanticists such as European Commission president Ursula von …
Can psychedelics cure depression?
Is there a clinical case for psychedelic drugs? Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist, has spent his career trying to demonstrate that there is — and that, beyond their recreational powers, drugs such as psilocybin can effectively treat depression. Some of …
Can the NatCon revolution escape the past?
It’s always interesting when the fiendish plans of undercover socialists are dragged into the light. This week, just such an occasion was unexpectedly provided at the National Conservatism conference. Alongside standard Thatcherite fare about free markets, small states, and level …
Renewable energy’s progressive halo
When discussing what is needed to solve climate change, there is a knee-jerk response: renewable energy. As a result, forecasts showing renewables poised to surpass coal as the largest source of electricity by 2025 are assumed to be a positive …
The death of the momblogger
Heather Armstrong didn’t mean to become a “mommy blogger”. In 1997, she taught herself to code, and began working at a Los Angeles tech start-up. When she started writing about her life online, her focus was Dilbert-style office politics. The …
Poland’s leaders have endangered Nato
On 16 December 2022, the most significant territorial breach in Nato’s history took place, but the chances are you didn’t hear about it. That day — almost a month after a presumed-to-be errant Ukrainian air defence rocket made international headlines …
Biden’s false border victory
One has to admire the chutzpah of Kamala Harris. Less than 24 hours after Title 42 expired, there she was, merrily clinking glasses at a Democratic Party soirée in a wealthy Atlanta suburb. When a journalist asked about the possible …