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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The great nonsense of cultural relativism has been superseded by personal relativism.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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How to Tell a Story About the Good Life

What kind of narrative can we build and share that motivates us to live well, in the absence of a religious story? Some years ago, a...

The Unseriousness of Ironic Detachment

On the need for seriousness and what happens when we are controlled by cheap irony. The internet meme has a style all of its own, a style...

Is "Everything Everywhere All At Once" Missing Something?

The film makes big claims and hints at even bigger ideas – but at the end of it all, is there any there there? Everything Everywhere All...

On Gratitude: A virtuous cycle

On Douglas Murray's defence of gratitude, how being grateful resists the poison of resentment, and the reciprocal nature of appreciating...

Doctor Not-So-Strange: The shallowness of the MCU

Have the Marvel movies stopped being worth our time, and what does deserve our attention? As my wife and I emerged from a cinema into the...

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Reader

How good reading brings us closer to others, and how efforts to personalise all the settings on our lives make us lonelier – and more...