The nineteenth century was a difficult and dynamic period for the French nation, as citizens of all classes and philosophical persuasions struggled to come to terms with modernity. These struggles are reflected in Gustave Flaubert’s first novel, Madame Bovary, published as a complete text in 1857. The story is well-known: Emma Bovary finds herself in [...]
The rise of populist movements across Europe is seen most potently in the success of the Hungarian Civic Alliance, which, under the tenacious leadership of Viktor Orbán, has been the ruling party in Hungary since 2010. A recent speech by Mr. Orbán, given on September 21 in Rome, will be music to the ears of [...]
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 London [...]
Europe would not be Europe without the current of tradition once inculcated by classical education. It is such an education we must seek to preserve. Though its immediate effects are not manifest, without it the culture would be ceded to those who wish to shape it for a radically secular agenda, perhaps even a posthuman one. [...]
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 have [...]
Near the end of his recent book, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (highly recommended), the English philosopher Roger Scruton makes a very interesting observation about what is possible in America but not in Europe. As he puts it, the burden of American conservatism has been to define the customs and traditions most in [...]
George Kennan was—and remains—an important, even compelling, figure in the early history of the Cold War. But these selections from his diaries reveal him to have been something other than what this honest and calm, but not always detached and cool, professional diplomat took himself to be. The Kennan Diaries, edited by Frank Costigliola (768 [...]
Europe has a suicidal tendency to ignore the problem underlying its decay: a lack of faith and families. But perhaps, in light of recent legislation in Poland and Hungary rooted in faith and family and the future, perhaps we may be seeing the sun rising in Europe’s East, even as we see it setting in [...]
Falling in love with French composer Gabriel Fauré’s Nocturne No. 4 wasn’t one of those thunderclap experiences. It crept up on me, gradually. I’d been listening to this Fauré Nocturne CD for almost a decade, mostly as I drove, and enjoying the music’s understated elegance and beauty. Then, this past year, something clicked with No. [...]
On its new album, Grand Tour, Big Big Train considers everything from the NASA ship Voyager's leaving the solar system, to the nineteenth-century romantic interpretation of The Tempest, to the meaning of one of the greatest saints of late antiquity, St. Theodora. The album really is about human exploration of self and of world. There [...]
The series of battles that took place in the Vendée have been almost entirely excluded from any recounting of the Revolution. Why? The rising in the Vendée paints a darker picture of the evils that Revolutionists did to those citizens, most of them peasants, who would not adopt the principles of the Revolution. Something about the [...]
Notre Dame nearly burned to the ground, from neglect, and we can say the same thing about the Church in France, in Europe, and in the West as a whole. So, we can say the same thing about our culture. On Monday, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire and nearly burned to the ground. [...]
William Warburton was a man who, as a theologian living through the debates of the Enlightenment, readapted his role while staying true to its intentions. His was a distinctive voice in these debates because he attacked all sides equally, seeing a paradox between human thought and history. Part of the purpose of intellectual history is [...]
Viktor Orbán’s notoriety ultimately has little to do with his arcane transgressions against what Western Europe’s rulers consider good government. It exists because he addresses, in language stunningly clear for a politician, the key civilizational questions facing Europe, those that richer countries are loathe to hear. A specter is haunting the European Union—the specter of [...]