Language
Pax Britannica
‘Britain’s best hope of renewing and defending Western civilisation is to recognise that the English language has conquered the world without a drop of blood being spilt’
No French Please
Sacre bleu! Why bother learning any French when in France you’ll just be humiliated? Let’s study Mandarin, or Arabic, or Spanish in schools instead.
Lost in Translation
As has been the case for hundreds of years, the appointment of Pope Francis was announced in Latin. But the BBC and Sky News didn’t know their quas from their elbows
Why Do Precious Leftists Loathe Tolkien’s Shire?
The author of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit was a great conservative writer
My Five Husbands
A new short story by Joseph Epstein
Reasons
New poetry by Sarah Skwire
“Weary of Silence, Soon Sickened by Words”
Delving into the various linguistic predicaments of Samuel Beckett reveals the beautiful complications of his writings.
Native Tongue-tied
Learning a foreign tongue opens up an entirely new spectrum of cultural rewards, yet state schools are failing to emphasise their importance
Continental Philosophies
Review of The Appointment by Herta Müller; Perlmann’s Silence by Pascal Mercier; and The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Flouting (Not Flaunting) the Rules of English
The teaching of grammar should be at the heart of the school syllabus. Without it we are killing intellectual curiosity
Tolerating the intolerant
“For those who thought that a global pandemic would sound the death knell for identity politics, think again”
How to prevent the next pandemic
‘I have been reporting as a science journalist for years that the world is at increasing risk of pandemics like this; that this was predicted; that we know what we need to do to prepare and we simply haven’t done it; and that more and worse pandemics are coming so we need to do that, now’
D’où parles-tu? The post-truth world
Power, illusion and the open society: how postmodernism undermines our foundational concepts