by Theodore Dalrymple The main square of the town that is nearest to my house in France, Les Vans, is called the Place Ollier, named after Léopold Ollier. This name will conjure up very little in the minds of 9,999 of 10,000 people, but Ollier was a great man, the most important orthopaedic surgeon ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple The orgy of riot and looting that followed the killing of George Floyd was accompanied by an orgy of self-righteous sentimentality among the opining classes. They detected a straightforward causative link between the killing of the victim and the looting of stores in Fifth ...Read More...

Dealing with your bank online makes the Labyrinth seem like a Roman Road by Theodore Dalrymple Everyone knows what a nightmare it is to deal with banks beyond the simplest operations: if it can be called dealing with them, that is. After all, the phrase “deal with” implies some kind of interaction, ...Read More...

The young flock to cafés, but the old remain cautious. by Theodore Dalrymple Paris is slowly coming back to life. It is even possible to see the exhibition of Turner watercolors at the Musée Jacquemart-André, provided that you book in advance, have your temperature taken as you enter, wear ...Read More...

Being killed by a brutal policeman does not change a man’s life from bad to good. by Theodore Dalrymple When I first saw the mural of George Floyd with large angel wings, I assumed that it was a satire on his sanctification – effective, perhaps, but not in the best of taste. Shortly afterwards, ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple What do people mean when they demand justice for George Floyd? I shall return in a moment to this question. Let me first sketch my own attitude to his death, which is not very different, I imagine, from that of most people. He was killed by a policeman behaving in a brutal ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Lewis Hamilton, the six-time world champion British Formula One driver, recently criticised his colleagues in the sport for saying nothing in the wake George Floyd’s death. If any answer to this accusation were required, a reasonable one might have been that it was not ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Too great attention to the use of language is a distraction from the essential and easily becomes mere pedantry; but to pay too little is to risk being deceived or manipulated by those who use language wrongly. Words, Aristotle said, should not bear more precision than possible; ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple The Covid-19 epidemic has cruelly exposed the intellectual, moral and financial frivolity of British public administration. Before the epidemic started its deadly campaign against the old, the fat, the hypertensive, the diabetic, the men, the poor, and the black, certain ...Read More...

On bringing children to political protests by Theodore Dalrymple “Give me a child until he is seven,” said St. Ignatius Loyola, at least allegedly, “and I will show you the man.” Whether or not St. Ignatius actually said this, I could not but help think of these words when I read a short ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple I read Charles Murray’s Human Diversity in France, a country whose motto is “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” All three of these terms are contentious both in their meaning and practical application, but none more so than Equality. It must be immediately obvious to anyone ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple On the evening before the slight relaxation of the lockdown in Paris, which felt like a liberation, young people held a street party near my flat. Their observation of social-distancing rules was less than obsessive, to put it mildly. The next evening, the police intervened ...Read More...

a book review by Theodore Dalrymple Considering how often revolutions have produced cataclysms, the word revolutionary has—at least for many people, especially when young—surprisingly positive connotations. The author of this short book, more extended essay than a history of revolutions in the ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple No good crisis, including the present COVID-19 epidemic, should go to waste. In this respect, the high priests of Britain’s secular religion, its highly centralised National Health Service, have certainly not been sitting on their hands. There has been so much propaganda ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple A foolish consistency, said Emerson, is the hobgoblin of little minds, but how are we to decide which consistency is foolish and which is wise? If in argument we cannot use inconsistency as a means of refutation, what can we use? And yet one knows what Emerson meant. Someone ...Read More...