Thomas More on Conscience, Courage, & the Comedy of Politics

By |2024-02-06T18:00:46-06:00February 6th, 2024|Categories: Christendom, Christian Humanism, Civil Society, England, History, Natural Law, Philosophy, Politics, St. Thomas More, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

As the gulf between classical and postmodern notions of conscience and government grows ever wider and their clashes more explosive, it is high time for the jury to give renewed attention to the nuances of Thomas More’s understanding of the apparently competing, but ultimately harmonious, demands of divine, natural, and human law. In August of [...]

The Underground Shakespeare

By |2023-11-27T19:03:58-06:00November 27th, 2023|Categories: Books, Culture, Dwight Longenecker, England, History, Literature, Mystery, Senior Contributors, Theater, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare|

Despite their obscurity, “The Rape of Lucrece” and “Venus and Adonis” were Shakespeare’s best-sellers. But why were these poems so wildly popular? Shadowplay, by Clare Asquith, 370 pages,  PublicAffairs, 2018) In Shadowplay—her first book about the secret messages in Shakespeare’s plays—Clare Asquith explains what sparked first her imagination and then her research: In the early [...]

England’s “Red Rose Revolution”

By |2023-11-20T23:17:04-06:00November 20th, 2023|Categories: England, Film, Monarchy|

The Red Rose Revolution brought about by Princess Diana's tragic death was a triumph of sentimentality over reality. In the intervening twenty-five years, that sentimentality has prevailed in England, sweeping away the sterling values that had been the hallmark of English character. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I have watched the most recent [...]

Beauty and the Beast of War: Remembering George Butterworth

By |2023-11-15T18:06:06-06:00November 15th, 2023|Categories: England, Joseph Pearce, Music, Senior Contributors|

Apart from the breathtaking beauty of his musical compositions, it is the ethos of Butterworth that attracts me. He was rooted in the soil and soul of England and enamoured of its shires. He was a true localist before the word was invented, the very antithesis of the modern and modish cosmopolitan. If I should [...]

Her Immaculate Majesty: The Queen of England

By |2023-11-05T16:23:58-06:00November 5th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, England, Joseph Pearce, Mother of God, Sainthood, Senior Contributors|

The reason for Walsingham’s importance is its association with the Marian apparitions to a pious English noblewoman in 1061. By the middle of the fourteenth century, people considered England to be “Our Lady’s dowry” and that she was, in some special sense, the protectress of the English people. Few people in today’s godless England have [...]

The Legacy of St. John Henry Newman

By |2023-10-08T22:04:55-05:00October 8th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christendom, England, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors, St. John Henry Newman|

Newman’s conversion in 1845, sixteen years after Catholic Emancipation and five years before the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England, heralded the birth of a Revival which would see the resurrection of the Faith in the English-speaking world. In September 2010, I was honoured to be invited to serve as an official commentator on [...]

Thomas Gray’s Desperate Pastoral

By |2023-07-02T21:08:12-05:00July 2nd, 2023|Categories: England, History, Literature, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

In his "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," Thomas Gray wrote a great, some­times mystifying and troubling poem, and, where the pastoral impulse is concerned, an admonishing one. No one born after the French Revolution, said the durable Talleyrand, can know how sweet life can be. This sentiment was quoted in his book about Metternich by [...]

Why the British Monarchy Is Still Relevant

By |2023-05-06T08:38:44-05:00May 6th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, England, Joseph Pearce, Leadership, Timeless Essays|

Perhaps it could be argued that the English monarch is nothing but an effectively powerless figurehead and that, therefore, his or her words are of little consequence. The real power resides with Parliament, not with the Monarch. Not so, I would reply. Or at least not necessarily so. I honestly cannot remember the last time [...]

Jane Austen and the Tudor Terror

By |2023-04-06T10:06:12-05:00April 5th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, England, History, Jane Austen, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Senior Contributors|

The indomitable Jane Austen has no love for “Bloody” Mary, but it’s intriguing and amusing that she sees her in the light, or should we say the shadow, of “Bloody” Bess, who would be her successor. There is no denying Jane Austen’s status as one of the greatest novelists of all time. Her works are [...]

The Victorian Jacobites

By |2023-03-20T13:14:40-05:00March 14th, 2023|Categories: Books, Conservatism, England, History|

Like their British counterparts, the American Jacobites bitterly criticized the damage done to the working class and cities by the industrial system and listening to their neo-feudal critiques one sees similarities with Progressivism and Populism. While these latter movements analyzed from the perspective of the political left, the Jacobites did so from the political right. [...]

How a Fairy Tale Prince Became an Anti-Hero

By |2023-01-18T18:18:48-06:00January 18th, 2023|Categories: England, John Horvat, Modernity, Monarchy, Morality|

There is nothing unique in Prince Harry’s story. The same plot applies to all who have walked down the selfish, disastrous road of postmodernity, where every tradition and social structure must be questioned, and every narrative denied. If there is a figure that is not a role model, it is Prince Harry, son of Charles [...]

“The Crown”: A Portrait of a Fractured Family

By |2022-11-18T08:19:57-06:00November 17th, 2022|Categories: England, Marriage, Monarchy, Television, Western Civilization|

The strongest point of Netflix's series "The Crown" is that it shows the moral decline of Britain and the West through the moral decline of one British family. As such, it is a sad and searing witness to the same state of fractured families and mutilated marriages we face across the waning West. Having completed [...]

Variations on “God Save the King” and “Rule Britannia”

By |2022-09-15T17:23:22-05:00September 15th, 2022|Categories: Audio/Video, England, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music|

Ludwig van Beethoven's Variations on "God save the King" and Variations on "Rule Britannia" for piano were published in 1803. Pianist Angela Hewitt remarks: Concerning the 7 Variations on ‘God save the King’, WoO78, Beethoven made the comment that he wanted to ‘show the English what a blessing they have’ with that tune.... It makes [...]

We Mourn the Queen

By |2022-09-11T11:13:41-05:00September 11th, 2022|Categories: Audio/Video, England, John Horvat, Monarchy|

We live in a postmodern, egalitarian world that detests everything Elizabeth II represented. It was not only the United Kingdom’s Queen who died on September 8, but also the Queen of all who saw her as a symbol of order in a world in chaos and disarray. We mourn because a great pillar of devotion [...]

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