O, the glories of a classical education! I spent part of this past summer attempting to supplement my classical deficiencies (what I received in college was partial and patchy) by perusing Cicero’s philosophical essays in English and plodding through parts of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy in the original Latin, dictionary in hand. In doing so, … Read more
Here’s a recent piece that asks the musical question, “Hitchcock: Monster or moralist?” In moments like that I most miss the common sense of G. K. Chesterton, who wrote: The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a … Read more
Britain’s Royal Family is often — no, make that always — in the news. Its position in the public mind has utterly changed over the past four decades — from something that held a real, and understood, place in the constitutional scheme of things into something more like a soap opera, and often described … Read more
Lately, I have been hearing a lot about how the primitive Church was not Roman Catholic. I don’t know why it is, but this information keeps bursting upon me in the most unlikely settings—a lunch party near the sand dunes, cocktails on the upper east side—where a kindly soul informs me between sips of … Read more