A suitably mad crowd gathered at the Spectator offices last night to celebrate the launch of Douglas Murray’s new book, The Madness of Crowds. Mr Steerpike marvelled at Mr Murray’s ability to bring such an intriguing mix of people together: where else in the world could you find Kevin Spacey, Paul Joseph Watson and a member of the bin Laden family in the same room?
Almost a hundred journalists, authors, politicians, pundits and friends flocked to the Old Queen Street office. The guests included Michael Gove, Rod Liddle, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Nadira Naipaul, Martin Ivens, Sarah Baxter, Toby Young, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Henry Newman, Freddie Sayers, Dan Hitchens, Iain Martin, Jacob Burda and Bloomsbury’s Robin Baird-Smith. Murray’s new book is attracting a lot of media buzz. His last effort, The Strange Death of Europe, was an international smash hit.
In his speech at the launch, Murray explained why his book challenged the orthodoxies of identity politics:
‘I have this view that we have an awful lot of things going on in our society that are filled with bad thinking, and they’re partly filled with bad thinking and bad thought because people are afraid to think and speak out loud these days – about a whole range of issues.
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