Violet – an opera by Roger Scruton

Violet has many ‘husbands’, none of whom she has given herself to: “I married none of them”, she says, “they married me.” It is the end of an age and the beginning of the end of an aesthetic sensibility that she and her live-in brood of bachelors furiously try to preserve. But what will come of love that always seeks the ideal, that tries never to be consummated in a particular time or place?

A Dove Descending: Part III of III

Roger Scruton

The Clarion Review is proud to present the third and final installment of this novella by writer and philosopher Roger Scruton.

Zoë’s dreams of meeting her destiny on the streets of London are running aground fast. To whom will she turn? To Dr Leacock, the predatory postmodern professor who’s always too ready to help? To Michael, the mysterious art student, who surely pours his angst into something worth living for? Back to her mother, whom she disgraced by her flight, and whom she still resents? Zoë takes her stand; will the world turn with her?

A Dove Descending: Part II of III

Roger Scruton

When we last saw Zoë, she had run away from home one morning, leaving her mother in tears. Now that her long-planned tirade against the family’s Cypriot traditionalism is behind her, however, Zoë seems to have no clear idea of what she will do or where she will go when she leaves work later the same day. Or, rather, she has too many ideas…

A Dove Descending: Part I of III

Roger Scruton

The first installment of the novella A Dove Descending about a Greek girl who falls from too great a height. She lives in London with her pious mother, her recently-deceased father’s continuing presence, and the lure of the modern life that books and a progressive professor have offered her. Now she must choose between the ancient culture she was born into and the freedoms offered by England.

Pass de Botton: An atheist’s appraisal of religion misses the cue

Brian Lapsa

A review of Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists.

Not long ago Starbucks sandwich boards advised us to “Take comfort in ritual”—in this case the diurnal rites of lattés and Frappucinos. It’s clear enough that the Giant of Joe benefits from regular patronage, but less clear is why recommending ritual might not be off-putting to a clientele whose apple of wisdom is to “think different.” Ritual is religious (or is thought to be) and is therefore considered wholly personal. Most Westerners tend to regard its presence in public space with suspicion.

The Homeric Christian: Gladstone’s Politics of Prudence

by: Melvin Schut

Ours is a time of entitlements, massive debt, and focus groups. Politicians court the public, tax, and redistribute. Yet it was not always thus. The nineteenth century has long been considered the heyday of small government and fiscal responsibility, especially pertaining Britain. And justifiably so. For this, William Ewart Gladstone deserves more credit than anyone else.

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The Hook of Truth

Gerard Kreijen

A review of Edmund Campion: A Life by Evelyn Waugh (Ignatius Press, 2005 [First published by Longmans, 1935])

That the undisputed master of dark humor and satire should have produced what is arguably the most compelling short biography of a saint to date is perhaps even more extraordinary than the claim that, today, both the biography and its author deserve close attention. Indeed, few means serve better to confront the hollow relativism of our age than turning to the conversion of Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) and the life of Edmund Campion (1540-1581), the saintly subject of his 1935 book.