Robert Hugh Benson's "The King’s Achievement" does what good historical fiction should do: it renders a complex historical situation justly and it brings characters to life in a story that is interesting for its own sake. On October 31, 1904, Robert Hugh Benson wrote his mother that he had just finished his novel on Henry [...]
Propelled into Supreme Command, and without ever having commanded in battle, Dwight Eisenhower was put into an almost impossible situation, having to meet the demands of his battlefield subordinates while satisfying the conflicting expectations and orders of his masters, both military and political. Eisenhower at War, 1943-1945, by David Eisenhower (977 pages, Random House, 1986). [...]
This year, when my father’s name is announced along with others from World War II, I will step forward and place that red carnation at the base of his white cross. Mid-week I’ll load the Jeep with a few things including food for Cora Jolene, the Dog. We will make a pilgrimage, a road-trip, some [...]
The Church has disavowed her ancient usurpations of the political. It remains for the Catholic to stop imposing these duties on her. Who is to say, once she has been thus unencumbered by the vain expectations of her own children for the war-leadership she should not provide, that she will not once more glow with [...]
The heightened pace of life in industrial societies, Charles Lindbergh realized, necessitated reflection on what type of life is best suited for man. Which of the two, reason or vital instinct, constitutes the best function of human beings? Which of the two contributes best to man’s happiness and lasting well-being? Charles Lindbergh begins his Autobiography [...]
Tomasi di Lampedusa’s “The Leopard” provides invaluable insight into 19th-century Italian history while creating a compelling story, allowing readers to relive an unfamiliar age of revolution and a fading nobility. Time under quarantine has been an excuse to revisit a personal favorite book and to explore its history, controversy, and literary value. I can think [...]
The Ancient Serpent had oft-times crawled into the sacred precincts of Holy Church since his first entry. However, this time his havoc would strike a thousand blows to the Mystical Body of Christ. St. Pope Pius X named the serpent: Modernism. At the beginning of time a snake slithered into a Garden called Eden. He entered [...]
Few remember Athelstan, Alfred’s grandson, who is neither lionized by the poets nor canonized by the Church. Yet he was a warrior king who is perhaps equal in greatness to Alfred and possibly rivals Edmund and Edward in piety. See you the windy levels spread About the gates of Rye? O that was where the [...]
With eyes wide open to the degradation we see all around us, we know that things are rotten in the modern world. Who can deny it? And yet there are more Christians in the world today than there have ever been in the past. The Church is not dead. Christendom has had a series of [...]
Hoffman Nickerson and a coterie of essayists in the 1920s and 1930s comprised the “Old Right,” a loose confederation of thinkers and writers animated by anti-modernism, suspicion of democracy, and worries over the debasement of Western culture. In 1934, the cartoonist David Low created the cartoon character of “Colonel Blimp,” an exaggerated caricature of older [...]
The experience of nostalgia is a feeling of beauty’s remoteness, but only because it is so far in the future. It is hope. I went for a long walk in Oxford the other night. The city, of course, is always enchanting, but in early summer and at night, it is so the most. When summer [...]
Land acknowledgement statements lack factual support: What was the historical nature of the “atrocity” mentioned in the statements? By what “violent and coercive means” was the land stolen? Morally charged language requires painstaking factual research and justification. We are all familiar with the ubiquitous land acknowledgement statement that has become a common feature of political [...]
Many classical music purists today consider Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music to be excessively sentimental, admittedly lush but too similar-sounding once you’ve heard one concerto. But is this a fair assessment? Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op 18 is the kind of music that grips you by the collar and draws you into its world instantly, [...]
On the (Proposed) Sinking of America’s Great Flagship It wasn’t supposed to end this way for America’s flagship, the SS United States: the ship bestowed with the honor of bearing the namesake of her nation; she is, perhaps, the greatest merchant ship to ever be constructed by, and operated under, the American flag. If you [...]