Leontiev grew up in a religious household in the era of serfdom. A serf artist (large households had serf musicians and serf actors as well) painted him as a baby, attaching wings to him and making him look like a cherub. Years later, Leontiev discovered that the household serfs were using this portrait of himself as a holy icon to ask for intercession. Amusing, no doubt; but who among us can live entirely without illusions?

I am still waiting for my copy of Litter to arrive by mail to the states, so I was excited to see that Dalrymple has a new Telegraph essay that presumably outlines some of the main points of the book. Judging from the abundance of reader comments, mostly in support, few people fail to acknowledge that there is in fact a problem, but they disagree on the extent to which immigration, a lack of personal responsibility or ineffective government services is the cause.

You will always have your head-in-the-sand types, of course. One of the more absurd reader comments said: “I suspect Britain has always been messy; it is just that materials have changed and do not biodegrade.” I wonder: what was the substance of the older materials that allowed them to biodegrade within seconds?

Read it here

Is handwriting anachronistic? The state of Indiana, no bastion of modern liberalism, seems to think so. Officials there have recently decided to eliminate the teaching of handwriting in favor of typing. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Dalrymple decries the decision because it “presage[s] a further hollowing out of the human personality, a further colonization of the human mind by the virtual at the expense of the real”, but he concedes that his reaction might be prompted by “[h]aving reached the age when pessimism is almost hard-wired into the brain”.

Edward Tenner at The Atlantic, who has studied and written about this subject, thinks Dalrymple might be overreacting a bit but agrees that “handwriting does express a healthy balance between convention and individuality” and that teaching handwriting “can be a key to a healthier approach to education and life.”

As an aside, Dalrymple mentions in the essay that his “first full-length handwritten composition” was “an eight-page account of crossing the Gobi Desert in a Rolls-Royce”. He notes that, “To my chagrin and everlasting regret, my teacher was not impressed by my formidable effort. She said that I must keep to reality and not be so imaginative.”

Surely this account was not from personal experience, so what was the source of his knowledge? Does this childhood composition still exist? Was his teacher’s reaction the impetus for a literary life devoted to non-fiction? These are obviously questions of the greatest importance.

Update: Dalrymple also wrote this very similar essay for the Express.

George Mackay Brown (1921–1996) was born in the Orkney Islands and, except for a few years of belated studies in Edinburgh, spent his whole life there. It is said that tuberculosis saved him for literature—Brown discovered he had the disease when he underwent medical examination to join the army during the second world war. Instead of serving, he spent six months in hospital, where he began to write. He was to spend another year in a sanatorium: such establishments existed as late as 1960.

If tuberculosis saved him for literature, medical progress saved him for life; but he was far from an unequivocal admirer of progress as a concept: “There is a new religion, Progress, in which we all devoutly believe, and it is concerned only with material things in the present and in a vague golden-handed future. It is a rootless, utilitarian faith, without beauty or mystery; a kind blind unquestioning belief that men and their material circumstances will go on improving until some kind of nirvana is reached and everyone will be rich, free, fulfilled, well-informed, masterful.”