New Criterion

If a prisoner walks into my consulting room in the prison with a stick, he's a sex offender; if he has gold front teeth, he's a drug dealer; and if he's reading Wittgenstein, he's in for fraud: for it is virtually a law of our penal establishments...

A generation ago, before John Paul II was pope, even those who were in favor of ecclesiastical innovation might have been shocked at the idea of applause in church. Yet when the Papal Nuncio to Washington gave the homily at the Pope's funeral mass...

The Royal Navy stumbled badly on the outbreak of war against America in 1812. In August, the USS Constitution sank the HMS Guerriere. In October, the USS United States captured the HMS Macedonian, and in December the Constitution sank the HMS Java...

Year after year, students in my class on the Russian novel have told me that my lectures directly contradict what they learn in other courses, especially in the social sciences. My lectures explicate Dostoevsky's ideas about free choice and responsibility...

The novelist, historian, and essayist David Pryce-Jones does not make it into The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature, but he does make it into the current issue of The New Criterion with a charming review of Sybille Bedford's...