by Theodore Dalrymple Magna est veritas et prævalet—“Great is the truth and its prevails”—is one of the few Latin phrases that I remember. Unfortunately, I do not think that it is altogether true, nor is it true even in its often misquoted form, Magna est veritas et prævalebit, “Great is the ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Ursula von der Leyen It is sometimes easier to coin slogans than to avoid using them. When I read the headline of an interview with Ursula von der Leyen, the newly appointed President of the European Commission, entitled “In Europe, we must stop speaking in slogans,” I ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Wolves have returned to the neighbourhood in which I have my house in France. It borders the département in which the so called Beast of Gévaudun, presumably a wolf, a pair or a pack of wolves, terrified the population in the middle years of the eighteenth century, killing ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple The French Minister for Ecological and Solidary Transition, François de Rugy, was recently forced to resign over public outcry at allegations of unnecessary extravagance at public expense—allegations that were given very wide publicity but which the former minister has since ...Read More...

A law student’s callous treatment of a homeless man sparks a national outrage. by Theodore Dalrymple In February 2017, an 18-year-old Cambridge University law student, Ronald Coyne, was filmed on the streets of Cambridge at night burning a £20 note in front of a 31-year-old homeless man, Ryan ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple The United Nations Children’s Fund is probably the greatest mass-poisoner in human history—not deliberately, of course, but inadvertently. It encouraged and paid for the drilling of tube wells in Bangladesh without realizing that the groundwater was dangerously high in arsenic ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple I doubt whether there is anyone who has never resorted to the ancient rhetorical tricks of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi. Some do it knowingly, others unknowingly. The omission of relevant facts and the insinuation of falsehoods are dual and often inseparable techniques ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple In 1980, a letter was published in the New England Journal of Medicine stating, quite correctly, that patients prescribed opiates such as morphine in hospital for acute, serious pain did not become addicts once they left hospital. This was important, because American doctors ...Read More...

Tattoo art is becoming alarmingly skilled and prevalent. What does its ascent from the marginalised to the middle classes signify? by Theodore Dalrymple When I started as a prison doctor in 1990, I was both fascinated and horrified by the tattoos inscribed on the skins of the prisoners. The ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple The totally disinterested historian who is curious about the past only for its own sake and has no axe to grind, no ideological preconceptions to reinforce by the use of selective evidence, and no policy prescription that he advocates with the support of supposedly historical ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple When I worked for three years in the 1980s in the East African country of Tanzania, I was outraged by the quite unnecessary state of impoverishment and pauperism to which the policies of the long-time president, Julius K. Nyerere, had reduced the population. These policies ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple A few words can express, or imply, a great deal. Here, for example, is a line from a review that appeared in the Guardian of a book titled Scroungers, a polemic against the notion that fecklessness, laziness, bad habits, or harmful cultural traits can have any effect on ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple In the wake of the horrible massacre in Christchurch, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, announced in parliament that she would never pronounce the name of the perpetrator, and forever refer to him only anonymously. In some quarters she has been taken almost ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Small episodes can raise large questions in one’s mind and recently I observed one such episode in my local bakery (which, alas, is not a very good one). A blowsy, slovenly, enormously fat woman of the publicly-funded class was demanding to know which cake her son of ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple I don’t suppose that there were many in the country who managed entirely to avoid talking about Brexit. The debate was simultaneously important and dull, in that respect rather like Mrs May. Passion in discussion was not necessarily proportional to knowledge, and many people ...Read More...