I read Theodore Dalrymple’s new piece in the New Criterion just a few hours after I watched a video on North Korea shot clandestinely by some foolishly brave Americans, and I found it impossible not to think about the Dear Leader as I read it.

Reviewing Kombinat: Industrial Ruins of the Golden Era, a book of photographs documenting the decaying industrial infrastructure of Ceaucescu’s Romania, Dalrymple praises the work for raising several profound philosophical issues: to paraphrase, the permissibility of aestheticizing evil and disaster, Communist construction viewed as destruction of the past, and the extent to which human societies rebounding from horror can begin anew, “as if nothing had happened”.

Read the essay here

Writing for StandPoint Online, Dalrymple celebrates one of his vocational and intellectual heroes — and a contemporary, no less.

What can I say? The man doesn’t like baseball caps.