G.K. Chesterton’s Socialist Friend: Robert Blatchford
Today’s enthusiasts for a socialist America will not be likely to know the name of Robert Blatchford or his story. If they did, they might think twice about their current enthusiasm. […]
Britain’s Not-So-Evil Empire
“Imperial Legacies” is a spirited polemic that exposes the misunderstandings, cynical disregard, and hypocrisy surrounding the history of the British Empire. Jeremy Black systematically debunks the ideologies of “decolonization” and postcolonial resentment and shows the harm of dismissing British history as a story of monolithic oppression. Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World, [...]
The Postmodern Heroism of John Milton
Instead of putting John Milton in the context of his own time, scholar David Hawkes proposes to put him in the context of ours, believing that the great poet and political writer’s life and work offer solutions to our own predicament. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to [...]
Tolkien & Anglo-Saxon England: Protectors of Christendom
J.R.R. Tolkien believed that the Anglo-Saxon world might offer us strength to redeem Christendom. The hero of “The Lord of the Rings,” after all, is an Anglo-Saxon farmer turned citizen-warrior. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Bradley J. Birzer, as he discusses J.R.R. Tolkien’s christological interpretation [...]
The Queen’s Speech and the Principle of Subsidiarity
In her recent speech, Queen Elizabeth began by stating that it was always her Government’s priority to secure the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. What is particularly exciting about this statement is that it recognizes an ancient wisdom, and most neglected subject: subsidiarity. Any reference to the Queen’s Speech might bring to [...]
Brexit and Evensong
While in London, my wife and I went to evensong at Westminster Abbey. Throughout the trip, evensong somehow gave us the symbol—high, formal, and beautiful—of the end of the day, both of British greatness and the vitality of Europe. After the Vanenburg Conference at Oxford earlier this month, my wife and I went to [...]
Brexit or Leave It
What does the European Union have in common with Hotel California? The answer is that you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Take, for instance, the ongoing Brexit saga. Over and again, in one democratic vote after another, the British people have made it abundantly clear that they [...]
An Introduction to English War Poetry
The poet’s career doesn’t end once he dies. The soldier’s career arguably does. The poet-soldier, then, has died physically, but what remains of him is his art. Both Edward Thomas and Francis Ledwidge managed to create something that transcended their persons and lasted long after being killed in war. When we think of English [...]
The Poetry of England
The real tragedy of England’s passing is not that the England we love is a figment of the imagination, but that it is real, in the sense that Platonic forms are real. This real England is present in Old English and Middle English; in Chaucer and Chesterton; in Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens. England: A [...]
“St. John’s, Cambridge”
I stand beneath the tree, whose branches shade Thy western window, Chapel of St. John! And hear its leaves repeat their benison On him, whose hand thy stones memorial laid; Then I remember one of whom was said In the world’s darkest hour, “Behold thy son!” […]
The Iconoclasm and Profanity of Roger Scruton’s Sacking
The impetuous call to sack Roger Scruton shows those who clamored for the blade of the guillotine to fall on his head for what they are. His sacking also exposed the concerted effort to demonize and silence anyone outside the public orthodoxy of thought... Sir Roger Scruton is one of the preeminent conservative intellectuals in [...]
Banning Books and Burning Heretics
Advocates of the liberal arts include “heretical” books in the great conversation, whereas political liberals seek to silence them as dangerous. As we have seen in Nazi Germany and in communist countries, the banning of “heretical” books ends with the burning of “heretics”… Several years ago, I visited the two-room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, [...]
Thomas More on Conscience, Courage, & the Comedy of Politics
As the gulf between classical and postmodern notions of conscience and government grows ever wider and their clashes more explosive, it is high time for the jury to give renewed attention to the nuances of Thomas More’s understanding of the apparently competing, but ultimately harmonious, demands of divine, natural, and human law… In August of 1534 Margaret [...]
The Underground Shakespeare
Despite their obscurity, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis were Shakespeare’s best-sellers. But why were these poems so wildly popular? In Shadowplay—her first book about the secret messages in Shakespeare’s plays—Clare Asquith explains what sparked first her imagination and then her research: In the early 1980s she and her husband attended a [...]