Theodore Dalrymple 
The rehabilitation game
‘They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,’ said the Soviet worker in the good old days; the British criminal could nowadays say with equal reason, ‘They pretend… Read more
Visiting rites
The slowest and most expensive museum refurbishment in world history must be that of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It is taking longer and costing more than it took and cost… Read more
Why borders matter
There is no better way of discrediting an opinion than by attributing it to a psychological quirk or peculiarity. The task is then not to refute it, but to explain… Read more
Coventry blues
He who would see England’s future should be separated for a while from the better parts of London and sent (literally, not metaphorically) to Coventry. There, amid the hideous and… Read more
Diamond Jubilee debate: Has Britain declined under Elizabeth II?
Yes Theodore Dalrymple Is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee a cause for jubilation? Certainly her reign has been a personal triumph: her iron sense of duty, gracefully performed, has been exemplary,… Read more
Rough treatment
If anyone needed persuading of the deep moral disarray of modern British society, the latest figures on assaults against National Health Service staff should be more than sufficient to convince… Read more
A case in point
You can tell that the economy of East Anglia is more flourishing than that of the West Midlands because the fine for drunken vomiting in the back of the taxis… Read more
It’s fun to smash things
Only the wilfully blind could have been surprised by the scale or ferocity of the riots that have engulfed Britain in the past week. Unfortunately, most of the country’s political… Read more
Young Turks
Comparisons are odious, generalisations dangerous and stereotypes invidious, but without them conversation would be tedious and talk nothing but an endless regression of subordinate clauses, each qualifying what the previous… Read more
Scarborough unfair
If it is evidence of the decline of British civilisation that you are after, you cannot do better than go to Scarborough. It is precisely because the material traces of… Read more
The Disneyfication of death
Why are children’s graves now littered with toys? Is a graveyard a public amenity or an arena of self-expression? An Essex council recently ordered grieving families to remove ‘decorations’ from… Read more
Common people
When I returned recently from Paris, everyone asked about the strikes, the riots, the violence and the chaos. All I had seen was a queue at one petrol station and… Read more
Prison may not work for them, but it works for us
Crooks who are in prison are not burgling your house, says Theodore Dalrymple. They themselves understand that perfectly clearly: it is only sentimental mugs who don’t When Mr Clarke went… Read more
Global Warning
We should always try to see ourselves as others see us, but not when the others are French. They are so biased against us that they can see nothing clearly:… Read more
The unselfish gene
On Kindness, by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor Whenever I say to someone that I do not believe that there is a universal human right to healthcare, that person always… Read more
Global Warning
My wife tells me, and so it must be right, that now that we are retired we must beware of the involution of our habits and interests. It is all… Read more
Withdrawal from heroin is a trivial matter
We live in Keynesian times: the answer to the economic problems created by a mountain of debt frittered away on trifles is clearly a whole mountain range of debt frittered… Read more
Global Warning
Reading an account by the historian John Waller of the Dancing Plague in Alsace in 1518 recently, I could not help but notice the interesting but perhaps incomplete parallels with… Read more
Global Warning
To a hammer everything is a nail, and to a doctor everything is a symptom. I was recently in a supermarket in a handsome and as yet unspoilt town in… Read more
Global warning
Because of the economic crisis, I was waiting at the bus station: £2.80 for a bus instead of £28 for a taxi home. I had 50 minutes to wait and… Read more
Latest blogs
- Woolwich eyewitness: one of the men fired a gun, but it backfired and he lost his finger Fraser Nelson
- Kindling by the pool – the changing face of holiday reading Mark Mason
- Woolwich attack: the aftermath James Forsyth
- ‘Not in our name’ – British Muslims denounce the Woolwich attack on Twitter Fraser Nelson
- ‘Soldier beheaded’ in south London: the Islamists repeatedly said they would do such things Douglas Murray
- The Sweet Sorrow of following Somerset Cricket Alex Massie
- ‘Soldier beheaded’ in Woolwich, south London – live reaction The Spectator
