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Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels in real life) has been viewing the bottom of British culture for many years as a psychiatrist and social commentator. As a psychiatrist, Dalrymple practiced in a prison and at a hospital in Birmingham, England. Nearly all his patients are from what can be fairly considered the "lower class" in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. These are the people who have been destroyed by the well-intentioned, but intellectually empty theories of the socialists and social reformers who believed they were delivering people from want, but in fact created a true dystopia. By making sure everyone could have a roof over their heads, food on their tables and changes in their jeans without lifting a finger, but by taking from the fewer and fewer productive people in English society, an underclass was created. With no reason to exert themselves and a popular culture that literally urges an endless regime of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll (or its equivalent), Dalyrmple has witnessed the destruction of English character. Rampant alcoholism and drug use; increasing illegitimacy; children raised without any form of parental supervision or guidance; the destruction of traditional mores and respect for law and more; a refusal to see the dangers of failing to insist upon the assimilation of foreign, even hostile, immigrants and more are contributing to the deterioration of English society. By implication, Dalyrmple makes it plain that this same kind of social destruction will soon infect and ultimately destroy all the Western nations. Dalyrmple offers no nostrums, no cures or panaceas. He is a reporter, not a reformer. Some of the twenty-six essays here are puzzling as they wander a bit too deeply into Shakespeare and the application of his words to modern times. But other of Dalrymple's essays are simply searing indictments of the foolishness of intellectuals, socialists and those who are blind to their own ignorance. Dalrymple's critiques of D. H. Lawrence, Virgina Woolf, Kinsey and other empty-headed intellectuals should be required reading. Virgina Woolf, for instance, saw no evil in the Nazis and urged people to do nothing to fight them, an attitude mirrored in today's England in those who see no evil in terrorist bombers who destroy innocent people. Most people have never heard of Stefan Zweig, one of the most famous writers in pre-war Germany. Dalyrmple uses his 1942 suicide to brilliantly illuminate the death of what was once considered culture. His commentary on an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art called "Sensation." Sensation was considered by many to be simply a display of bad taste. But "intellectuals" considered it a demonstration of free expression and artistic license. Here Dalyrmple contrasts the lionization of a female killer of children with the poignant pleas of the mother to remove a disgusting "artwork" of the murderess from exhibition. The smug words of the director of the Royal Academy once again drive home Dalyrmple's message: the intellectuals are stupid. He illustrates this with a single utterly fatuous quote from the director: "All art is moral. Anything that is immoral is not art." Dalrymple examines the phenomena of Princess Diana, noting that at the time she was being killed in a Paris car accident, the presses of the liberal Observer newspaper were rolling with a story stating that if Diana's IQ were five points lower, she would have to be watered daily. Within days, of course, the same Observer and other liberal organs were falling over themselves in praising Diana as the "people's princess" and other adulations. Dalrymple's musings of the exchange of depth for shallowness not only in British media, but in British society are fascinating and all the more disturbing because they are clearly true. Two of the most stiking essays deal with what happens when Islam breaks down, a perceptive observation of what happens when Islam encounters both the West and modernity, and a forecast of the recent riots in Paris. Overall, Dalrymple is not happy reading. As noted, he offers no nostrums, no cures; frankly no hope. He is an acutely sensitive observer to what is wrong with the times and how it came to be. Perhaps, suitably depressed after reading Dalrymple, the ordinary citizen will do what he or she can to rip the blinders off people who are comfortably listening to the know-nothing intellectuals who would rather see the world destroyed than admit to their blindness. Jerry