Toby Guise

Toby Guise

Toby Guise is a London-based writer and novelist with an interest in political culture. His genes have been spliced from Simon Raven and Kyril Bonfiglioli. His novel The Gold Sands has been variously described as "the most important piece of social comment this decade" and "having nothing good to recommend it - at all." He writes comment for The American Conservative, Tablet Magazine, and Reaction; and travel for the FT and the Spectator. He lives at @tobyguise.

Jeremy Corbyn and the Politics of Conspiracy

We live in an era where fake news is real, and real news is fake. A recent furor in the U.K. concerned the involvement of Cambridge Analytica—President Trump’s favorite data jockeys—on the Leave side of the E.U. referendum. Overspending! Collusion! Betrayal! The Observer drew itself up to its ...

Russia on Earth

“God in heaven, Russia on Earth.” So say the Serbs, who have been programmed to see Russia behind every turn of good fortune. Westerners are now being programmed to see Russia behind every turn of bad fortune. To the Kremlin, it is the same difference: Both mean the Third Rome is strong. This ...

Elder Dobrev, the Saint of Bailovo

True Religion

The Icelandic state is considering a ban on child circumcision—with predictable reactions. Secular humanists claim victory while religious groups claim persecution. Yet their very reaction only reinforces the straw-man view of faith as something both absurd and sinister. Like Kierkegaard’s ...

Oxfam and the Fall of the Moral Monopoly

“Now, that represents a degree of hypocrisy I’ve hitherto suspected in you but not noticed, due to highly evasive skills.” So says the eponymous lead character in the cult comedy Withnail and I. We have the same reaction to the global charity Oxfam having covered up extravagant sexual ...

Theresa Mayday

Britain’s international relations have acquired something of Paris in the spring of 1871. Having achieved a lightning defeat at the hands of Prussia, the inhabitants of the French capital ignored the Teutonic army at their gates and descended into bloody civil war. With Brexit at our gates, ...

Taylor Swift

Born-Again Virgin

We have just witnessed a curious phenomenon in the U.K. Bloodthirsty conglomerate Virgin unilaterally withdrew the Daily Mail from its public-transport arm. A preening statement that the paper “did not align with the company’s values” grabbed SJWs as irresistibly as the tractor beam of the ...

Islamo-Stalinism

It’s that time of the year again. As Coca-Cola’s magic truck trundles across our televisions and Starbucks’ ubiquitous red cups punctuate the daily commute, the terror alerts are flooding in. On Saturday, a knifeman was shot at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. Two weeks before, elements of a ...

Church of Saint Sava, Belgrade

Ratko Mladić and the Ghosts of History

After hitting the skids a few years ago, I moved to Serbia. Hell, it was fun. Belgrade had been bombed in ’99. The laser-guided ordnance was so accurate it could follow streets. The Serbs set up rooftop barbecues and watched. Some wag produced T-shirts emblazoned with crosshairs, which became ...

A Madness at the Heart of Modern Consumerism

The advent of a White Christmas is now heralded by Black Friday: this infamous moment when the grand coalition of Western capitalism starts whipping its adherents toward the tills. Six weeks later, the same people are spat out into the dawn of a New Year, bleary-eyed and broke. Black Friday gives ...

The Normalisation of Crime

A few years ago, someone opened fire on me in St. John’s Wood. If you’re surprised, spare a thought for me. I was stepping onto the crosswalk leading toward Regent’s Park when a moped approached at speed. There was a moment of indecision: Would it proceed or would I? I stepped back, ceding my ...


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