Richard D North.

Lazy or abstracted, a bit of both, I hadn't researched Killing Them Softly before I schlepped round to a late-evening screening in Belfast. It was a revelation. A little bit The Driver, and a little bit anything by Scorsese (but less posy) and somewhat Gomorrah. Read more...

This is a powerful move: involving, intelligent, scary. A bit of a paint-dryer, and no harm in that. Not quite a tear-jerker, which is good. But why did the man in the urinals say it was sentimental? Read more...

There was a fascinating RightMinds piece by Melanie Phillips on the row generated by the lefties Deborah Orr and Mehdi Hasan as they argued that being "pro-life" is not necessarily to be right-wing. I am not a fan of Ms Phillips' argument. Read more...

Here are five cribsheets I have prepared for a New Culture Forum launch/outing (London, 24 October 2012) for The Right-wing Guide to Nearly Everything. They download as PDFs. Read more...

During an outing on the Daily Politics Andrew (BBC TV, 20 September 2012) Neil asked me about right-wing heroes. I think we agreed that they were thin on the ground. I mentioned Keith Richards on account of his "the buck stops here" attitude to drug abuse. (And forgetting his claim to anti-Establishment dissidence, cited in Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind.) I collected myself sufficiently to add Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph. Below, are some more. Read more...

David Priestland had a fascinating but flawed take on Tom Stoppard's take on FMF's take on the Tory type (The Gentle Tory is alive and well – on television). Actually, I say, the BBC drama is unsurprisingly BBC-ish, but with valuable quirks. Its adaptor may be rightish, but the BBC's leftishness can live with this show pretty well.  Read more...

This week, Kindle/Amazon have published my Right-wing Guide to Nearly Everything, with a great free interactive sample. It’s on Facebook and Twitter, @RWG2NE. By all means use any of them to learn more or give the work a shove.

RWG2NE has gone out to most of… Read more...

Andrew Brown wrote a characterisically clever and challenging piece in his Guardian Cif Belief blog: Bob Marley, miracles and monsters on my path to atheism. I commented as follows: Read more...

Britiain's economic success clearly matters just now and it's germane to wonder if the Olympics have helped. Here are some pros and cons on the matter. Read more...