In the November edition of New Criterion, our bibliophile doctor evaluates another book related to incarceration—this time dealing with the letters of history´s most famous prisoners.

Please note that this essay is behind a paywall.

Conversely, I was often much surprised at how well people of intelligence or education coped with the miseries and hardships of prison—often better than those whose normal train of life much more closely resembled prison conditions.

In the October issue of New Criterion, Theodore Dalrymple reviews a book by a young academic covering the historical development of the idea of incarceration as punishment.

Please note that this essay is behind a paywall.

In fact, prisons in their present incarnation, which seem to us so indispensable a part of modern existence, are not by any means immemorial; they are less ancient than hot chocolate.

In last week´s Takimag, our favorite doctor returns to the curiously disturbing rise in ugliness—from fashion to rap to architecture and art—in our modern and economically prosperous world.

To dress well likewise takes self-discipline. It also takes effort and imagination—not imagination of a high order, perhaps, but of the minimal kind that requires a person to see himself as others see him. But that implies that others are and should be important in our eyes, which is an affront to our self-importance.

In the November issue of New English Review, our lyrical doctor considers the life of the British poet, R.S. Thomas, after reading an excellent biography by Byron Rogers.

Wordsworth, Keats, Thomas: were they right? As on many questions, I face both ways. I know what they mean: we need to maintain our wonderment at Creation, and it is terrible if we lose it or never have it in the first place (a condition that social media promotes).

Over at Australia’s Quadrant, the good doctor weighs in on Starmer’s corruption scandal, the proliferation of rights, and the problematic acceptance of foul language.

At any rate, the very word rights has a tendency to dissolve proper distinctions in the minds of many. Once a tangible benefit has been declared a right, it enters a different metaphysical sphere from that in which most of human life is conducted. If I have a right to something tangible in the possessive sense, then no one and no state of society has a right to deny it me.

In last week´s Takimag, Dr. Dalrymple gives his readers his take on the latest ´Big Tobacco´ lawsuit from Canada and the moral culpability of the government and smokers themselves.

Thus, the principal financial beneficiary of smoking has in effect extorted money from the producer of that benefit, namely the tobacco industry. Whatever the misdeeds of the latter, this is a morally disgusting manner of proceeding, especially when the principal beneficiary was always in a position to prohibit smoking as it has now in part done.

Our pugnacious doctor eviscerates the current crop of mediocre, intellectually unserious, left-wing bureaucrats managing (the formerly Great) Britain´s rapid decline in his latest City Journal article.

If Starmer and Reeves had been born in an Islamic country, they surely would have been Islamists of statue-destroying propensities, because they would have regarded all that was not of their doctrine as mere Jahiliyyah, the product of the age of ignorance.

In his latest Takimag piece, our impassioned doctor comments on more feigned outrage from the left-liberal media following an awkward Donald Trump remark about the attractiveness of the junior senator from Alabama.

The will to outrage is also the will to power; and the ultimate power is that of forcing people to believe, or to pretend to believe, what is patently untrue, for example that all women are beautiful, on pain of excommunication or worse.

Over at Law & Liberty, our feisty doctor challenges the generally accepted wisdom of economic journalists, who are usually far wide of the mark when it comes to sound reasoning, not to mention their poor predictions.

Or perhaps the moral is that one should beware of articles written by economic journalists, for whom no level of savings, investment, spending, or of anything else, is ever the right one.