Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
Every now and then someone asks me if I have ever thought of becoming an MP. My response tends to be a laugh so deranged that the question answers itself. When I manage to verbalise the answer it usually goes something like this: ‘No, because I enjoy saying what I think is true.’ Occasionally my
Every generation, and individual, has to rediscover the arguments for free speech for themselves. Some people learn from major incidents. Some when the censors come for someone close to them, or an opinion that they hold. Others come to believe in free speech because they realise that while being offended on occasion might be terrible,
Most people won’t have heard of Selina Todd. The only reason I had was because some years ago the BBC invited me to appear alongside her on one of those slots that used to be for intellectual discussion. ‘Would you be interested in coming on Radio 3 at about 10.30 p.m. to discuss class?’ I was
Here is a good test case going on before our eyes. The broadcaster Alastair Stewart has left his job of decades after sending a quotation of Shakespeare to a member of the public. The quotation (because it refers to an ape and the recipient happens to be black) is being interpreted as a sign of
‘Cancel culture’ is a horrible term because outside of a dictatorship nobody can actually be ‘canceled’ or otherwise ‘disappeared’. All that can happen is that people can be found to have trodden across one of the orthodoxies of the age. A small number of bullies then come for them. And a larger number of otherwise
In what turned out to be the last year of his life, Roger Scruton often mulled on the nature and techniques of twenty-first century denunciation. For Roger, like others who had seen totalitarian societies up close, knew what intimidation and officially-imposed forms of thinking were actually like. Which is not to say, of course, that
Sir Roger Scruton has died. Diagnosed with cancer last summer, he passed away peacefully on Sunday surrounded by his family. There will be a lot of things written and said in the coming days. But perhaps I could say a few things here. The first is to reiterate something that the Scruton family have said
We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 3: Douglas Murray on the shameful hounding of a distinguished philosopher: Sometimes a scandal is not just a scandal, but a biopsy of a society. So it is with the assault on Sir Roger Scruton, who in recent weeks has been
Sir Tom Stoppard is Britain’s — perhaps the world’s — leading playwright. Born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, his family left as the German army moved in. The Strausslers were Jewish. In adulthood he learned that all four of his grandparents were killed by the Nazis. His father was killed by the Japanese
Sometime around the start of this decade, before anti-Semitism was as cool as it has become, I was standing on a stage in London with a couple of rabbis and a Muslim. And if that sounds like the start of a joke then what followed wasn’t. We were there at the request of a new
Some readers have been asking me to comment on the latest London Bridge terrorism incident. And if I have some reluctance it is only because although ennui comes from writing the same article over and over again, that’s nothing like the feeling you get from writing the same article so often that you don’t even
Clive James died last weekend at his home, surrounded by his family, after a long illness. The poet, writer, critic and television star was one of the most remarkable, talented and insightful members of his generation. Loved by millions, he was an incomparable presence in the lives of his friends and readers right up until
One of the few advantages of going on television or radio is that in time you meet all the leading nutters in the land. In most ordinary situations, I would never have encountered Holly Rigby. She says that she is a ‘teacher’, though seems to be part of that miraculous class of leftist activist able
It is almost five years since two trained jihadists went into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and killed 12 people. Philippe Lançon survived the editorial meeting that was taking place as the gunmen burst in. Published to huge acclaim in France last year, Disturbance is his account of events. It is long, perhaps
In my latest book, ‘The Madness of Crowds’ (copies of which can be found in all remaining [not remainder] bookstores, etc) I mentioned in passing that I sometimes wondered how it feels to be a heterosexual reading the news these days. That feeling wafted past me again over the weekend as I went to the
Ah, the BBC. There’s really nothing like it is there? This morning I had the pleasure of appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. I know what you’re already thinking: ‘You fool, you fool – it’s a trap’. But I was phoned last night and asked if I would come on this morning to discuss
While never having felt any previous urge to dine in Reading, I now find myself trying to secure a table at the Oracle Shopping Centre. Should any Spectator reader wish to join me there over the next week, I can ask Chick-fil-A to make it a table for two. There we can dine on any
Discussions of ‘privilege’ have become one of the themes of this age. In a short space of time, the obsession with the subject has forced its way from the margins of the social sciences right into the centre of all cultural and political debate. Politics and office politics is increasingly consumed by it. One day
In the magazine cover piece this week I describe how institutions as well as individuals are having a hard time making it through this deranging age. Bishops call for restraint but then have outbursts of ungodly anger. MPs and peers talk about the need for civility and then are found jabbering like street-corner lunatics. But
Today nearly all real public discussion has become impossible. Which is why nearly all public thinking has become impossible. Which is why the thinking has gone bad on nearly every major issue now facing us. It isn’t just politics that is finding it hard to operate. It is also the media and every other piece
