Right-wing Guide to Nearly Everything.

They did rather well didn’t they? The Granada TV company, often a trail-blazer, wittily turned its 1964 World in Action special Seven UP! into a seven-yearly snapshot of a cohort of kids who were seven year-olds in the phoney revolution of the Beetles, lifestyle Sunday colour supplements, and Swingin’ London. Read more...

Many people in the creative, inventive and caring industries - the Brightest and the Best - have never socialised with people who openly espouse the Conservative cause, or have only met them to have a row. This why they should expand their horizons..... Read more...

BBC R4 had a great In Our Time episode last week. It discussed Social Darwinism and taught me (I fear for the first time) to wonder which came first: the sociology, as in social, or the biology, as in Darwinism? Put it another way: who was the precursor of whom? Who got to evolution - and got to its messages - first? Was it our obvious hero Charles Darwin, or the famous old villain, Herbert Spencer? Naturally, I was rooting for Spencer.... Read more...

Mrs Thatcher was not funny or warm, at least not in public. She wasn't even populist. Unlike The Gipper, it is unlikely that she will ever become a National Treasure. She represented - was like - a very small segment of British society: the lower middle class. Her virtues were those of a stage nanny or governess, as in Mrs Doubtfire, or Mary Poppins, or Anna from The King and I. She was firm, friendly, upbeat, undaunted. She treated us all like children. But above all, she decided that what we all needed was plain speaking.... 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...

Capitalism in crisis. Economy in recession. Israel in the dock. A populist Democrat in the White House. What a wonderful time to love being on "The Right". And it is surprisingly confident, too. Read more...

I don't like the soft-left, liberal, green agenda. Most of that's pretty easy to explain and justify. But the "liberal" thing is tricky. Read more...

There are obvious reasons not to be on the right of the cultural and political debate. You won't be liked, for start, and people will think you are selfish or even fascist. Here are some reasons in favour. Read more...