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.
I didn’t have very high hopes for ‘Life In Squares’ (the BBC three-parter about the Bloomsbury circle which concluded this week). But the first episode stuck me as promising. The second faltered, and the third was rushed and anti-climactic. Nevertheless it was all much better than expected, with some strong performances. The main reason for
Every age has people protected by a certain ‘halo effect’? At points in the past members of the clergy might have been said to enjoy the advantage. More recently it would appear that celebrities were the ones who could get away with anything. We like to think we are beyond all this now – and
Friends of mine who still call themselves ‘liberals’ or ‘leftists’ occasionally confide in me that they think the left might be screwed. Depending on how I feel on that particular day I tend to reply either that (a) they must stay and fight their political corner and make the left decent again or (b) one
The literary emissions of the left are hardly ever enjoyable, but they can be instructive. Last year Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century became one of the biggest-selling political books of the year. Like a thousand-page Soviet report on tractor production, it hardly seemed intended to be read. The point of its success was
Thanks to Guido Fawkes, I learn that the left-wing author Owen Jones has just appeared at the Sinn Fein summer school in Ireland. According to Sinn Fein’s own newspaper, Owen used the opportunity to praise Sinn Fein’s ‘progressive’ politics, suggest that people take inspiration from the 1916 Easter Rising and announce what a ‘passionate believer’ he
Bad news from the continent. In an interview with the German weekly Stern, Laurent ‘Riss’ Sourisseau, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, announced that he would no longer draw cartoons of any historical figure called Mohammed. This follows his former colleague Renald ‘Luz’ Luzier saying a couple of months back that he would no longer draw
The British have always been in love with Florence. First visits cannot disappoint. One friend recalls being herded around as a schoolgirl, unexpectedly coming face to face with the replica of Michelangelo’s David in the Piazza della Signoria and fainting right there in the street. Return visits can be just as stunning. You can fly
The Prime Minister’s Birmingham speech on radicalisation and Muslim communities in the UK given earlier today is a rather important one. Regular readers will know that I’m not easy to please in this area, but it seems to me that David Cameron has come to understand the real problem of Islamic extremism and has been
It is often said that British ambition and influence in the world are on the wane. But there can be few greater demonstrations of this than our country’s lack of attention to one of the biggest issues of our time. I am in Washington at the moment, and have been admiring how intensely the Vienna
As we watch the Eurozone catastrophe enter its latest ‘final phase’ one phrase keeps recurring to me. That phrase is ‘banging on about Europe’. Does anybody else remember when those words were used (at least since Maastricht I think) to dismiss absolutely anybody who was worried about the overreach or mismanagement of the whole EU
The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have
Is being gay ‘left-wing’? You wouldn’t have thought so. If being gay is something which some people just are then there is no obvious reason why gays should not be of every political persuasion and none. Why should the fact that you are attracted to members of the same sex mean that you are in
Each year Anjem Choudary earns more in benefits than a soldier does starting off in our armed forces. This is a fact I never tire of pointing out – especially to Anjem’s face whenever we have the misfortune to meet. The follow-on point, which I think also worth continuing to make, is that there is something
It is amazing what some people are willing to listen to on a Saturday. I have just watched Charlotte Church’s speech to the small fringe of ‘anti-austerity’ activists in Westminster at the weekend. And my reaction is very much ‘Coo!’ Of course I knew how humourless this portion of the left can be, with their beliefs that Ukip
Honestly. No sooner have I filed a piece than along comes Sayeeda Warsi to help prove my point. Yesterday morning she popped up because another three sisters and their nine children appear to have traveled from West Yorkshire to join the thriving Islamic State. Apparently Sayeeda knows one of the families. And of course she
Should we feel sorry for people who join barbarian jihadist groups like ISIS? I ask because I had always assumed that people who volunteered to join gangs which specialise in rape, decapitation and ethnic cleansing should be looked on with opprobrium. But the ground is, it seems, shifting. Everybody needs to be a victim in
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) is a strange beast. Its membership largely consists of Asghar Bukhari and his brother. Occasionally another person appears on television claiming an affiliation to the group – an affiliation promptly proved by use of the organisation’s modus operandi, viz furious shouting backed up by ferocious stupidity. Anyhow, it has
Today’s Times carries an interesting story. A new report from the Department of Education reveals that: ‘Almost one in three of England’s primary school children is from an ethnic minority – the highest level yet. One pupil in five speaks English as a second language.’ There follows some information about how these numbers are putting
Freddy’s blog on the so-called ‘rape culture’ that we in Western democracies are all meant to be struggling under reminds me of an unwittingly important moment on BBC3 last year. It was provided by our colleague James Delingpole when he appeared on something called ‘Free Speech.’ This is an almost comically appalling ‘yoof’ programme which
The former Chief Rabbi, Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, is one of the most interesting thinkers, writers and speakers about today. His interventions into the public debate rarely fail to encourage thought, knowledge and indeed wisdom. I had the pleasure of interviewing him last year for the magazine just before he was due to give a major
