In life, we are always dancing on the edge of a volcano. The dance may last longer than it did in times gone by, what with the great increase of life expectancy; nevertheless what John Donne wrote in 1624 remains true: We study health, and we deliberate on our meats, and drink, and air, and ...

The inclination to analyze politicians’ conduct by means of psychiatric diagnosis is growing. This is unsurprising in view of what was once called psychiatric imperialism: the classification of all thought and human behavior whatever as psychiatric disorder. Psychiatry becomes indistinguishable ...

If anyone should wonder why traditional parties have lost their hold in some European countries, they could do worse than read David Fraser’s short book Britain, Tough on Crime? It does not deal directly with the decline of traditional political parties, but rather, by recounting the way with ...

If the Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa had not been hanged on charges trumped up by the brutal military and kleptocratic regime of General Sani Abacha, in 1995, himself to die in mysterious circumstances three years later, he would have been 83 years old. It astonishes me to remember now that it was ...

The last, and indeed the only, time I saw a film about an invasion of Earth by giant spiders was 42 years ago in the Teatro Municipal of Uyuni, on the Bolivian Altiplano. The spectators wanted the spiders to defeat the Americans who were fighting them, and cheered the arachnids on to victory, but ...

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, said Juliet, but the legislature of Illinois does not agree. It believes that the word “offender” should now be replaced by the term “justice-impacted individual.” Among other things, this is typical of the verbal inflation so beloved of ...

It is a commonplace that the West is in decline, and that nothing can now save its bacon. It is addicted to consuming more than it produces, a situation that can continue only for so long. As Hemingway said, you go bankrupt first slowly, then quickly and suddenly. But for the West to become ...

Whenever I try to escape pop music relayed in public places at high volume—which is often, though considerably less often with success—the thought comes into my mind that the harnessing of electricity was a disaster, if not for humanity, at least for civilization if good taste be part of that ...

When I am in England, I rarely go to the cinema, largely because the taste of the English public is so low. Recently, however, I saw Macbeth, a feature film of a live theatrical performance. Suffice it to say that I have seen worse, even much worse. But that is not to say a lot, considering the ...

One of the things that I notice walking through the streets of England—but not only in England—is the almost complete lack of self-respect of the population. Self-esteem, of course, is another matter entirely: Most people are on the qui vive for anything that they think might be regarded as an ...