Earning brownie points

Prospect is a monthly magazine with high aims, and it is therefore welcome. To borrow from the old advertisement for Mars Bars, it fills the gap. It is hard to think of any comparable outlet in this country — as opposed to the United States — where it is possible to publish contributions of 5,000 words and upwards. David Goodhart had the idea of it, raised the money and is the editor. Top marks for all that, with excuses for the horribly arch pun in the title of this selection from ten years of publication.

A monthly magazine of this kind ideally promotes its version of right opinion, and scotches its version of wrong opinion. T. S. Eliot’s Criterion, Cyril Connolly’s Horizon, or F. R. Leavis’s Scrutiny, dictated a certain literary and artistic taste, in each case unconditional. As the editor of Encounter, Melvin Lasky was out to prove that everything from politics to poetry prospered under capitalism and not communism.