Other News

Massacre in Manchester

Massacre in Manchester

May 23, 2017 at 2:11 pm 0 comments

The stupidity and cowardice of our leaders neatly dovetail with our own totemistic cult, that of political correctness. All religions and all cultures are equally respectable, aren’t they? They have their culture, we have ours, who’s to say ours is better?

France coming apart

France coming apart

April 29, 2017 at 10:30 am 0 comments

Here is an absolute must read before the second round of the French presidential elections on 7 May. It’s an article in City Journal by Christopher Caldwell, author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West. The subject of Caldwell’s essay is Christophe Guilluy and the “ComingRead More

St George, pray for us

St George, pray for us

April 23, 2017 at 4:08 pm 1 comment

It’s St George’s Day today, and we must all hope that the saint hasn’t yet withdrawn his patronage from England. This is sorely needed, for the country is under attack from all sorts of dragons. This format doesn’t allow compiling a complete taxonomy, so I’ll just focus on the politicalRead More

KGB Vlad honours Ivan the Terrible

KGB Vlad honours Ivan the Terrible

October 16, 2016 at 6:15 pm 1 comment

Every country honours its iconic personages, those seen to have served the nation particularly well. And the choice of icons is telling. The English erect statues to Nelson. The French, to Louis XIV. The Italians, to Garibaldi. Acting in the same spirit, Putin’s government has just unveiled a statue toRead More

Twilight of the democracies

Twilight of the democracies

September 26, 2016 at 5:52 pm 1 comment

When democracies fail to deliver, all bets are off. We stand on a threshold.  We are teetering on a brink. Something momentous is upon us.  Think December 26, 1991: the collapse of the Soviet Union. Think something on that scale. Think, furthermore, not of being onlookers at the fall of someone else’s world. Imagine,Read More

Modernism & Postmodernism – The Death Throes of a Decadent Culture?

February 27, 2016 at 4:20 pm 0 comments

Dr Anthony Radice and Mr Alexander Boot. A panel discussion chaired by Dr Joseph Shaw. This is part of The Quarterdeck Series, recorded on Wednesday 11 February 2015. The Quarterdeck Series is a programme of short extra-curricular evening talks designed to complement the Defence Academy’s ethos of developing minds thatRead More

General Rose should do a Colonel Pride

General Rose should do a Colonel Pride

February 25, 2016 at 6:48 pm 0 comments

Unlike today’s spivs who stack parliamentary votes by knavish trickery, Colonel Thomas Pride was a straightforward man of action. When in 1648 it looked likely that the Long Parliament would vote the wrong way, the good colonel moved in with his troops and removed those MPs who hadn’t seen theRead More

Walesa is no news in the news

Walesa is no news in the news

February 24, 2016 at 6:42 pm 0 comments

Our papers’ unquenchable thirst for regurgitating yesterday’s news is nothing short of amazing. That Lech Walesa was in cahoots with Służba Bezpieczeństwa, the Polish secret police, has been mooted since 1989, when he was universally hailed as the heroic liberator of Poland. His codename in the Służba, Bolek, was alsoRead More

Papal fallibility

Papal fallibility

February 23, 2016 at 3:15 pm 1 comment

A pontiff is infallible only when speaking ex cathedra on matters of doctrine. It’s kind of Pope Francis to remind us that otherwise a pope may be very fallible indeed. The latest reminder was given last Sunday, when His Holiness called for wholesale abolition of the death penalty. With allRead More

Hitchens’s attack on Ukrainian independence

Hitchens’s attack on Ukrainian independence

February 22, 2016 at 2:37 pm 1 comment

The other day I suggested that trying to support a wrong proposition can make even intelligent people sound silly. Any defence of Russia’s aggression against the Ukraine does just that. Witness Peter Hitchens, who generally makes sense when arguing in favour of supportable propositions, such as leaving the EU orRead More