Richard D North.

On culture, Nature, liberal issues, monasticism, spirituality

Latest posts

Slow Movies: A proposition

I have nurtured an enthusiasm for “slow movies” as a way of filming scenes which I think lend themselves to quiet inspection but also for the sort of gaze which might be called “meditative”. I find myself staring at, say, flowers or stained glass windows. To say I “zone out”… Read more...

Published

06 December 2024

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Uncategorized

Critical Theory: A push-back

I am posting three MS Word documents and identical PDF versions which gently but firmly interrogate Critical Theory and some allied ideas. These all have long back-stories and some merit if viewed with decent scepticism. The 21st Century has allowed them to grow like Topsy-Turvy and to an unchallenged prominence… Read more...

Published

01 December 2024

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Civilised Right-wing, Mind & body, On art

Is this Nora Whitehall?

For about 40 years I have had this oil painting in various sorts of storage and knew it for longer on my parents' walls. It is by my grandmother, the artist and poet who was, on her third marriage, Mrs Clifford Bax, née Vera May Rawnsley (and following marriages to Stanley North and Filson Young).

The undated painting is titled "The Old-fashioned Dress" (but the sitter isn't named). I am pretty sure my parents (Paul and Margaret - Peggy - North) told me it's a portrait of their friend, Nora Whitehall. Read more...

Published

16 November 2024

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Mind & body, On art, On books

Earth v Mars, Musk v Thunberg

In the past week or so I have visited Luke Jerram's twin Mars and Earth planets, as they temporarily loomed in Chichester and Lambeth cathedrals respectively, and thought of Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg, and humanity's multiple wings and prayers.
Read more...

Published

04 November 2024

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Civilised Right-wing, Mind & body, On art

The Modern West: Assaults from inside and out

The story of the past 125 years is both terrible and wonderful. The best news was that the world’s poor mostly saw greater affluence. And didn't the West abandon imperialism and defeat Fascism? Our present modernity – our 21st Century – has plenty of good news. But do we not see new proto-imperialisms, and isn’t it peculiar that Westerners have largely lost their former cheerful, mildly cynical realism under respected governments? They may even have forgotten what personal adulthood and public professionalism look like. But do we really have to believe that Fascism might be making a comeback? Read more...

Published

24 October 2024

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Civilised Right-wing, Mind & body, Politics & campaigns

Glyn Philpot: painter and modern pilgrim

This piece was triggered by the Pallant Gallery’s 2022 retrospective show and monograph, Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit, and deploys much of the research behind that blockbuster show and tome. Glyn Philpot (1884-1937) was a major figure in his lifetime and a marginal one after it - until the Pallant breathed new life into his reputation.  The Pallant gave us Philpot's variety and variability, but also his  constancy and consistency. And his depth.

I foreground what I take to be the spiritual quest which I think made his life and work a sort of pilgrimage. It is moot what might be heard of Philpot henceforth. He presents, as he always did, an embarrassment of riches, including some forgiveable embarrassments. Born 140 years ago, he is a superb man for our times, as he was for his own. I hope the future enjoys him and makes him the subject of interesting revisionism.

Comments and corrections will be very welcome. Read more...

Published

12 October 2024

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Civilised Right-wing, Mind & body, On books

Kate Hepburn, designer, 1947-2024

I want to honour the life of Kate Hepburn, the graphics designer, who died in Hampstead's Royal Free Hospital in late July this summer. She made a big impression at Vole magazine in the late 1970s, and in many other creative ventures. Corrections and new information would be very welcome. Read more...

Published

07 October 2024

Filed in

Mind & body, On art, On books, On theatre

Leo Marks: Of heroes and voyeurs

This is an account of the son of a well-known bookseller who became a pioneer writer and manager of wartime codes and then switched to conceiving and scriptwriting a fictional account of sado-vouyerism. His book, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War 1941–1945  (1998) tells the first story (its publication was delayed by censorship issues). Peeping Tom (1960, and directed by the famous Michael Powell), at first reviled and now a cult classic, tells its own story. The real Leo Marks (1920-2001) lurks tantalisingly somewhere in these works, but he is nowhere explicit about all that.. Read more...

Published

07 September 2024

Filed in

Mind & body, On books, On movies

Peter Millett: A senior judge’s revelations

My knowledge of the legal system is as much from TV as from my occasional apearences before judges in court (twice) and in Parliament (once). I have been a tourist observer of some judges, both civil and criminal, and felt a lot of respect and a batsqueak of anxiety. I have sometimes felt that the less we know about judges as people, the better for justice. And yet I fell on the memoir As in Memory Long (2017) by Lord Justice Peter Millett (1932-2021), with a will. It is deliberately but almost slyly revelatory. It was encountered by chance, but exerted a peculiar spell. Oddly, but above all, Millett was not a celebrity judge. He was not a Woolf, Hoffman, Sumption, Bingham or Lester and I prefer neglected byways to well-trodden highways. Perhaps that’s because I am struck that fame conduces to the performative. A couple of warnings. Peter Millett reveals himself to have had a certain pettiness in his nature. I have not skated over this. And I repeat: I am not equipped to judge him as a judge. Luckily, I have come across Colin Paterson,  an excellent writer who is, and nearly does. Read more...

Published

07 September 2024

Filed in

Civilised Right-wing, Mind & body, On books, Politics & campaigns

Professionals: The vital elites

The publication on 4 September 2024 of the final report into the catastrophic 2017 Grenfell Tower fire highlighted a wider range of issues than any single disaster report before it. It seemed to top-out twenty years' worth of corporate and institutional malfeasance which have brought the "crisis in trust" to the fore. From Enron (2001) to the decades of the Post Office scandal (which arguably added judicial failure to the mix), these debacles gave impetus to the pervasive modern sense that modern public bodies can't be relied on to be decent or frank. Read more...

Published

03 September 2024

Filed in

Civilised Right-wing, Handling protest, Mind & body, Politics & campaigns
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