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"Hill House": Haunted by What Might Have Been

The great nonsense of cultural relativism has been superseded by personal relativism. Values are now relative to each person. Shirley...

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On Living and Dying Well

What the shared life – and death – of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft can teach us about a "timely death". Humans have achieved...

"The Midnight Club": Perfection as the enemy of the Good

On Mike Flanagan's new series and the nihilism of insisting people are perfect as they are. In Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix offering,...

Unseen Terror: On uncertainty and fear

On terror vs horror, the stories of Stephen King, and dancing with death. If there’s one thing (though I’m sure there are many) that...

Do Facts Matter in Fiction?

On objective facts, subjective experience, and whether authenticity is more useful than truth in art. “Kind reader, with keen judgment...

Founders, Builders, Heroes: How to fix problems

On the courage required to face our problems and the strength needed to overcome them. There’s a passage in Giovanni’s Room by James...

Sorrow in the Conservative Soul

How Philip Larkin's 1958 poem describes the sense of loss that haunts the conservative worldview. Home is so sad. It stays as it was...