New English Review has published a new collection of Dalrymple’s columns, Out Into The Beautiful World. The Amazon page here includes glowing praise from some prominent figures. Myron Magnet compares Dalrymple to Montaigne, Conrad Black calls him “one of the most elegant and erudite contemporary writers in the English language”, and John O’Sullivan says, “Theodore Dalrymple has done something that all the severe literary critics had decreed impossible. He has revived the essay.”

Dalrymple’s own introductory words from the Amazon page are:

When I was a young man I thought that metaphysics was the most exciting (and important) thing in the world. I wish now that I had not wasted so much time on the imponderable questions of metaphysics but had used it to more worthwhile effect. Rather than study philosophy, I should have studied insects.

In the little essays that follow, I have no grand theory to prove, no single message to convey. Small things and slight occurrences have caught my attention and caused me to reflect a little. I hope only to please the reader.