Can we escape the nightmare of egalitarian liberalism? First published in the Summer 2021 edition of The Salisbury Review Few pastimes are more perversely consoling in an age of civilisational collapse than taking refuge in that notable twentieth-century literary tradition, the depiction of dystopian worlds to come. George Orwell’s (1984) and Aldous Huxley’s (Brave New World) are the most celebrated of … [Read on]

Since I am currently living with a friend in the Hungarian countryside, and I had to act the part of an undertaker in a comic-horror film being shot near Budapest, I found myself back in Budapest a few nights in early May staying with a hospitable actress and dancer. She had spent most of her life working in stage musicals, … [Read on]

Having been a Brexiteer since the late 1960s, when Tony Benn, Peter Shore and Enoch Powell were laying down the patriotic case for opposition to entry into an embryonic country called Europe, I’m all too willing to see the dark hand of the Brussels Empire on any wheeze designed to bring about the destabilization and then disintegration of the United … [Read on]

In 1955, Rebecca West published her account of a trial, which she attended, of 31 men, accused of lynching a young black man, called Willie Earle, in Greenville, South Carolina. They had removed him from a gaol, and tortured and beaten him to death. He himself had been accused of killing a white taxi-driver and was awaiting trial. At the … [Read on]

For the first time in thirty-three years, I am carless; my small VW is sitting outside but I am reluctant to use it. At first, I didn’t react when the next street was suddenly sealed off at one end assuming it was due to the usual, ‘road works.’ Then the road I use once a week to shop for myself … [Read on]