Saturday 30 August 2008

 

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Clemency Burton-Hill
Clemency Burton-Hill

Clemency suggests


In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas

Conservative iconoclasts required

Theodore Dalrymple
Encounter Books, The Oxford Publicity Partnership Ltd, 129pp, £10.99,
Peregrine Worsthorne
Tuesday, 11th December 2007

Peregrine Worsthorne

Having been a monarchist all my life, it was a bit embarrassing the other day to have to admit to a television interviewer that I could not remember the reasons why I had become one in the first place. In truth, of course — as I explained — I became a monarchist as a matter of course, pretty well by instinct; everybody was doing it. So I did it. The interviewer was not impressed. ‘Sounds like prejudice to me’, he said, putting me to shame. Now, along comes the highly cerebral prison doctor, Theodore Dalrymple to assure me that I was wrong to be ashamed. Prejudices of that kind, he argues, are a thoroughly good thing and the sooner we get back to being a nation which imbibes its sense of right and wrong, and of manners and morals, with its mother’s milk, the better all round.

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