Author: Theodore Dalrymple

Race is a subject about which we all feel slightly nervous these days, because whatever attitude you take to it, someone will call you a racist, an accusation from which no plea of innocence is allowed or believed. This is because it is almost impossible to be consistent about it; and it is why, in general, I avoid it as a subject. We are told on the one hand that the very concept of race is an evil construction without objective validity, whose main purpose is to serve prejudice; on the other, perfectly respectable medical journals are full of papers … Continue reading →

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Whatever else may be said about Marxism, it provided (for those who needed it) an eschatological philosophy in a post-religious world. It served more than one psychological purpose: It gave those who adhered to it the comforting feeling that they understood the inner or hidden workings of the world; that they were far superior in this understanding to those who did not adhere to it; and that they were participating in something far bigger than themselves. In short it gave them a sense, or illusion, of transcendence. But though many Marxists claimed that the downfall of the Soviet Union did … Continue reading →

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I suspect that I am of the last generation that ever considers writing anything by longhand. Indeed, there are reported to be places in America where children are no longer even taught longhand. Astonishing though it now appears to me, I recall learning to write by using an old-fashioned pen with a refractory nib that I dipped in a china inkwell full of watery but nevertheless deeply staining ink, filled regularly by the teacher from a metal jug that contained gallons of the stuff. How proud I was when I finished a page without making a blot (can you, I … Continue reading →

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One of the most denied of all human rights is that to silence. I do not mean by this the right to remain silent when accused of a crime, though in Britain at least this has effectively been abolished. I mean, rather, the right not to be assaulted everywhere by extraneous and unnecessary noise. Silence has become a luxury that very few can afford. An Italian artist was once asked why he had moved from his native country to the wilds of the west of Scotland, not at first sight an exchange that many would make. He replied that while … Continue reading →

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I returned recently to my house in France for a brief break. The weather was of the best—a cloudless sunny sky, warm and dry. It was almost perfect, but there was a fly in the ointment, the fly in the ointment being the flies in our bedroom, hundreds of them. Why they should have gathered there I do not know; but as an ancient philosopher so wisely said, whatever happens must be possible. There were also, as it happens, immense numbers of ladybirds on and around the windowsill. They are sluggish creatures at best, and while we wanted to dispose … Continue reading →

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Some time ago, I was asked to review a vast biography of Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright and poet, by an admirer of his work. It is seldom that one reads hundreds of pages about someone without coming across a single instance of a decent, kind, or selfless act, but so it was with Brecht. He couldn’t even be bothered to wash for the convenience of others. The French fascist architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, was another of this charmless ilk, though cleaner than Brecht (a Marxist, the latter’s decision not to wash was his tribute, albeit … Continue reading →

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Some time ago, I was asked to review a vast biography of Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright and poet, by an admirer of his work. It is seldom that one reads hundreds of pages about someone without coming across a single instance of a decent, kind, or selfless act, but so it was with Brecht. He couldn’t even be bothered to wash for the convenience of others. The French fascist architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, was another of this charmless ilk, though cleaner than Brecht (a Marxist, the latter’s decision not to wash was his tribute, albeit … Continue reading →

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There is nothing so odd, bizarre, and sometimes disgusting as other people’s customs. To adapt and paraphrase Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady with regard to women, why can’t other people be more like us? After all, we are perfectly well-intentioned as well as rational beings; from which it follows, as the night the day (as Polonius would have put it), that those who are not like us are ill-intentioned and irrational. On a short visit to the Persian Gulf recently, I had the good fortune, undesigned, to be present on the first day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic … Continue reading →

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Recently I made reference to the criticism Simon Leys made of a book by Maria-Antonietta Macchiocchi. He said that the most charitable interpretation that could be put on it was that it was the product of stupidity; any other interpretation must involve outright fraud on the part of the authoress. I once made use of a rather similar argument myself, in another context and before I knew of Leys’ criticism of Macchiocchi. I had written an article just after NATO had finished bombing Serbia suggesting that its cruise missiles should be turned on the thousands of hideous modern buildings in … Continue reading →

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When I was asked to name the contemporary writer whom I most admired, I used without hesitation to say—until he died in 2014—Pierre Ryckmans, better known as Simon Leys. Leys was a Belgian who lived more than half his life in Australia. He was a Sinologist, art historian, novelist, literary essayist, and translator: from Chinese into French and English, French into English, and English into French. He was a gifted artist (and his Chinese calligraphy was admired by Chinese connoisseurs of the art, which is high praise indeed); he was also an intrepid sailor and navigator. He first came to … Continue reading →

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Freud said that dreams were the royal road to the unconscious—provided, of course, that the traffic was directed by him. His work has always seemed to me more like soothsaying than science, which perhaps explains its popularity in the 20th century, with its need for pagan mystics masquerading as rationalists. Neither the plausibility nor the persuasiveness of Freud’s speculations accounts for his influence on so many intelligent and well-educated people for so long; rather it was the convoluted implausibility of his speculations that attracted them. We all like to be in on a secret not comprehensible to others. This is … Continue reading →

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My best books are the ones I haven’t written. They are not yet even in the larval stage, but I know them to be profound and original in content and perfect in form. I am very proud of them, and the mere thought of them gives a spring to my step. They are a justification for my having lived. It is really a pity (for the world, that is) that I shall not live long enough to write them. As Nero put it, what an artist dies in me. Many of us go to our graves thinking that if only … Continue reading →

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I hesitate, in this vale of tears, to bring before the public, however small it might be, my own personal travails, but at least I can claim to be an expert on them, insofar as I experience them myself. Many writers are expert on nothing else but their experience of their own irritations with existence; there are newspaper columnists (or, as the Nigerians would put it, whole newspaper columnists) who write about nothing else. The only justification for this tiny focus is what the British historian Lewis Namier once said: that in a single drop of dew may be seen all the … Continue reading →

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I can never quite make up my mind whether politics is important or unimportant to me. I have only to read the latest headline to feel either a surge of rage or despair, moderated by a brief burst of bitter laughter. Is reality satire, or satire reality? It is difficult to say these days. I used sometimes to write in a satirical vein, but am now hesitant to do so just in case some policy maker draws inspiration from it for a later foray into the higher (and compulsory or enforced) absurdity. On the other hand, my life continues on … Continue reading →

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Mr. McDonnell, deputy leader of the British Labour Party, which for the time being is in opposition, recently objected to the presence of hereditary peers in the “upper” house of Britain’s Parliament, using the crude and vulgar language typical of populist politicians anxious to demonstrate their identity with the people or the masses. (It is strange, by the way, how rarely leftists who are in favor of confiscatory economic policies are condemned as populist when they appeal mainly to envy, spite, and resentment, those most delightful of all human emotions.) Speaking for myself—the only person for whom I am fully entitled to speak—I … Continue reading →

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