One of life’s difficulties, I have found, is that it keeps throwing up questions to which there is no indubitably correct answer. This means that the exercise of judgment is perennially necessary: and there is hardly a moment’s respite from this burdensome imperative. Alas, where there is judgment there is error, or the possibility of
I think I should abandon the world: I am too easily irritated by it. I should follow the example of Xavier de Maistre, brother of the brilliantly reactionary philosopher, Joseph, and stick henceforth to my room. In his Voyage autour de ma chambre, de Maistre tells us that by describing his journey he is offering
Recently while travelling on the London Underground, the opening words of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ran through my mind like a refrain: ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic events and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ Why,
These things are sent to try us: I’m speaking now of circular letters from the General Medical Council. I recently received a second such letter about the Council’s Ethnicity Census from the president of the Council: Toward the end of 2007, I wrote asking for your help with an important project designed to help us
No doubt a Martian arriving on earth for the first time would perceive little difference between an inhabitant of Great Britain and an inhabitant of New Britain (off the coast of New Guinea), except perhaps that the former showed a greater propensity than the latter to get drunk and scream in public. Similarity and difference
The last time I played rugby, I was sent off for reading on the field. It was my small satirical protest against the supposition that my character would be much improved by having my knees dragged along icy ground, or my hand trodden into the mud by boys who, by dint of no effort of
The image of women in Victorian times veered between that of madonna and whore, but nowadays in Britain it veers between harridan and slut. This is only natural in a country where vulgarity is not only triumphant, but militant and deeply ideological. The men, of course, are just as bad. Recently, I flew to an
Staying recently in a handsome French provincial city, I could not help thinking, as I walked down its silent cobbled streets at night, what it would have been like if it had been in England. How restful is that deep, urban silence, which the young English so hate for fear of having to attend to
Life has taught me very little, but one thing I have learned is that the only employee of local councils with a genuine vocation is the rat-catcher. He always loves his rats, eliminating them with the deepest respect, and is extremely knowledgeable and interesting about their habits — which are, indeed, very interesting. The last
Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning It is when you see the English enjoying themselves that you realise the futility of life. Perhaps I should say trying to enjoy themselves: for in the attempt, rarely successful, they turn either glum or public nuisance. The occasion of these melancholy reflections was a rainy weekend in Torquay,
I realised that the town was a true community as soon as I heard a rumour that an old lady, a herbalist, had poisoned one of her neighbours. That is what community means: caring enough to poison people. In cities, contact with neighbours is so fleeting and impersonal that antagonism can be expressed only with
The writer Trigorin, in Chekhov’s The Seagull, always carried a notebook with him in which he jotted down ideas or snatches of conversation that interested him and that might have proved useful to him in the future. I have tried to develop the Trigorin habit myself, but unfortunately I have often forgotten to take my
Death and taxes: these, according to Benjamin Franklin, are the two immovables of human existence. In modern life, however, there is a third: drivel, from which, try as one might, it is now impossible to escape. I concede, of course, that it is possible that it’s my sensitivity to drivel rather than its incidence or
In reviewing this book about the social, political and intellectual indispensability of disrespect, I should perhaps declare an interest: I am several times disrespected in it. I hope the author will not conclude, if I fail to take my revenge on this occasion, that I am suffering from the wrong kind of niceness. All my
Whenever I return to England from abroad, which is often, a very troubling question comes insistently into mind: why are the people here so ugly? I do not mean by this that I think all foreigners are handsome or beautiful, far from it. One of the tricks that Stepmother Nature has played on humanity is
If you would like to see the kind of out-at-elbow tweed jackets once beloved of schoolmasters before they discovered the joys of earrings and the like, and still by far my preferred apparel, you must go to provincial book fairs. They are smaller and less frequented than they used to be. It is a strange
Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning It has been shown conclusively that people who listen to the news or read a newspaper at breakfast are more miserable than those who wisely maintain themselves in ignorance. Unfortunately, help for the former is not at hand: one of the main stories in the newspapers recently was that
There is no building so hideous that it is beyond the powers of any modern architect worth his salt to design something even worse. This important truth of the science of aesthetics was borne out recently when I visited Paris and went for the first time to the Musée du Quai Branly, on the banks
Theodore Dalrymple issues a global warning Thank goodness I retired in time from the National Health Service: it has cut down enormously the number of forms I have to fill in. The latest proto-genocidal form sent out to employees by my erstwhile employers was called ‘a data cleanse’, though it soon became known as ‘an
The medical profession used often to be twitted with the mortality of its own members: for if doctors knew so much, how came it that they died like everyone else? I think a more interesting question is why people who study literature for a living write so badly. After all, death is a fundamental and