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Theodore Dalrymple

Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses Paperback – March 1, 2007

by Theodore Dalrymple (Author)

122 customer reviews

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This new collection of essays by the author of Life at the Bottom bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. It suggests comparison with the work of George Orwell. In these twenty-six pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the breakdown of Islam to the legalization of drugs. Informed by years of medical practice in a wide variety of settings, his acquaintance with the outer limits of human experience allows him to discover the universal in the local and the particular, and makes him impatient with the humbug and obscurantism that have too long marred our social and political life. As in Life at the Bottom, his essays are incisive yet undogmatic, beautifully composed and devoid of disfiguring jargon. Our Culture, What's Left of It is a book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Dalrymple writes a clear and considered prose that makes him formidable indeed. (David Pryce–Jones Book Review Digest)

Theodore Dalrymple has succeeded (once more) in publishing a book that is both thoughtful and absorbing. (Paul Hollander New York Sun)

The brutal, penetrating honesty of his thinking and the vividness of his prose make Theodore Dalrymple the George Orwell of our time. (Denis Dutton, Editor Arts and Letters Daily)

His gift for storytelling will keep readers turning pages. (The Christian Century)

Theodore Dalrymple is the best doctor-writer since William Carlos Williams. (Peggy Noonan)

There is so much learning and unconventional wisdom in it that you want to make the reading last. (Norman Stone)

Theodore Dalrymple is the Edmund Burke of our age.… Our Culture, What's Left of It is not simply an important book, it is a necessary one. (Roger Kimball)

Dalrymple's moral courage shines through the most. Compelling reading; highly recommended. (Library Journal)

Engrossing. Dalrymple is intelligent, witty, uncommonly perceptive about human affairs, and scathingly honest about human folly. (Edward J. Sozanski The Philadelphia Inquirer)

It's rare for someone to produce a work on social issues that is so readable. (Kevin Walker Tampa Tribune)

About the Author

Theodore Dalrymple is a British doctor and writer who has worked on four continents and now practices in a British inner-city hospital and a prison. He has written a column for the London Spectator for thirteen years and is a contributing editor for City Journal in the United States. His earlier collection of essays, Life at the Bottom, was widely praised.

Paperback: 356 pages
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee (March 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 156663721X
ISBN-13: 978-1566637213
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 8.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 122 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #355,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1129 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Regional & Cultural > United States
- #3151 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Anthropology > Cultural
- #3652 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory

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Eric Mayforth

How Britain Declined

December 31, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Theodore Dalrymple is a doctor by trade, but in "Our Culture, What's Left of It," Dalrymple diagnoses the decline of the health of his native Britain. The author notes the utter failure of the "elites" in Britain, as well as the attitudes that led to coarsening of the culture and morals, with the resultant disaster in the rest of British society. Dalrymple's work as a physician among the poor exposed him to the consequences of the breakdown of the British family (and government subsidization of that breakdown), and he talks of the death of childhood and poor dietary habits among much of the populace; he also explains why he is against the legalization of drugs.

Other essays in this volume look at topics further afield—one of the most potent is his essay examining the writings of Marquis de Custine on Russia. He recounts the consequences of the metastasizing of Communism in the last century (including its effects on Havana), and compares Communism to liberty and the writings of Custine on Russia with those of Tocqueville on America.

As a keen observer of human nature, Dalrymple notes the greatness of Shakespeare and two of the essays here describe the extent of Shakespeare's insight into the human condition. Dalrymple also has essays on Stefan Zweig, Virginia Woolf, Ivan Turgenev, Karl Marx, and James Gillray, and also has an essay on the dystopian novels of the past century. Essays on the decline of British art, the consequences of stifling bureaucracy, and the reaction to the death of Princess Diana round out this insightful volume chronicling the unfortunate decline of a great nation.

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Connoisseur

The fallacies of HOPE or why you should not trust the Left.

June 17, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I discovered this amazing author while reading Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life (Dr. Peterson mentions it on his website). Theodore Dalrymple (real name Anthony Daniels, a retired British psychiatrist) is an absolutely brilliant writer, whose short essays are written with an English sense of truth, humor, and wit that I doubt any other contemporary author has surpassed. The book discusses cultural problems from our contemporary reality, related to real events from the past two decades: a well-chosen material for deep reflection. Here are some quotes ---
from THE FRIVOLITY OF EVIL (on the pitfalls of the modern welfare system):
"Better that millions should live in wretchedness and squalor than they should feel bad about themselves..."
from WHY SHAKESPEARE IS FOR ALL TIMES:
"Shakespeare knew something that we increasingly loath to acknowledge: there is no technical fix for the problems of humanity [...] The prevention of evil will always require more than desirable social arrangements: it will forever require personal self-control and the conscious limitation of appetites."
from DON'T LEGALIZE DRUGS:
"No culture that makes publicly sanctioned self-indulgence its highest good can longer survive: a radical egotism is bound to ensue, in which any limitations upon personal behavior are experienced as infringements of basic rights. Distinctions between the important and the trivial, between the freedom to criticize received ideas and the freedom to take LSD, are precisely the standards that keep societies from barbarism."

Every page abounds in insights!

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Ben

Like a car wreck, it's hard to avert your eyes.

September 23, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Fantastic book consisting of essays about the sorry state of Britain--with an essay or two about other countries such as France. It's not very uplifting, but if you can stand the raw reality you will likely enjoy it.

Dalrymplye is a doctor who has worked for years in Britain's poorest wards and prisons. His patients come almost entirely from the bottom rung of British society and often exhibit antisocial behaviors. He sees what ails them but he also sees that no one is willing to do what it takes to tackle the root causes of their dysfunction.

By my estimation, Dalrymple is essentially a conservative, though he was raised by communist parents (his mother fled Nazi Germany). Dalrymple considered himself a communist as a young man though he came around to a new way of thinking after witnessing the horrors wrought by generations of left-wing social policy.

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Rick Skwiot

Finely dark view

July 6, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I recently read and enjoyed, if that’s the right word, two of the curmudgeonly doctor Theodore Dalrymple’s admirably written and perceptive essay collections, “Our Culture, What’s Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses” and “Not With a Bang but a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline.” For I came away sadder and wiser, particularly regarding the sorry state of Great Britain, whose illegitimacy and crime rates now rival or exceed those of the U.S. There, as here, the breakdown of the family and resulting cultural, spiritual and moral decline has come with best of intentions and the worst of outcomes. And without much thought to addressing the spiraling rot by rescinding the laws and policies that fomented it.

But Dalrymple’s topics range far beyond politics and urban dysfunction (of which he has had ample firsthand knowledge, working as a prison psychiatrist.) He writes compellingly and freshly of literature, art, religion and more. I highly recommend both books—though not for those looking for cozy reads that posit an optimistic view of the future.

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