We have posted on YouTube a speech that Theodore Dalrymple delivered at the Harvard Club in New York on November 14, 2001 to mark the release of Life at the Bottom. The speech is in five parts. Part 1 is below. Look for the others here. We have also created a SkepticalDoctor channel at YouTube to collect videos related to the good doctor.

The event at the Harvard Club was hosted by the Manhattan Institute, publisher of City Journal, the magazine that published the essays that were collected in the book. City Journal editor Myron Magnet provided the introduction, the first few seconds of which are unfortunately cutoff in the video (and I can’t seem to fix it). Missing from his introduction is the following:

Good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to see you all here. Welcome.

Gathering blurbs for Life at the Bottom was an extraordinarily pleasant experience. People couldn’t say yes enthusiastically or quickly enough. It was as if they had been waiting by the phone just to be asked. And because we approached some of the nation’s foremost thinkers, the blurbs that came back with such lightning speed were marvels of intelligence, each one a pithy epigram going straight to the heart of the book’s accomplishment.