Durham WASP

Hidebound and Reactionary [over 40,000 followers]. Also on Twitter

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delon

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RIP

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The Beautiful Librarians by Sean O’Brien

The Beautiful Librarians The beautiful librarians are dead, The fairly recent graduates who sat Like Françoise Hardy’s shampooed sisters With cardigans across their shoulders On quiet evenings at the issue desk, Stamping books and never looking up At where I stood in adoration.

Once I glimpsed the staffroom Where they smoked and (if the novels Were correct) would speak of men. I still see the blue Minis they would drive Back to their flats around the park, To Blossom Dearie and red wine Left over from a party I would never

Be a member of. Their rooms looked down On dimming avenues of lime. I shared the geography but not the world It seemed they were establishing With such unfussy self-possession, nor The novels they were writing secretly That somehow turned to ‘Mum’s old stuff’.

Never to even brush in passing Yet nonetheless keep faith with them, The ice queens in their realms of gold – It passes time that passes anyway. Book after book I kept my word Elsewhere, long after they were gone And all the brilliant stock was sold.

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“Our civilization cannot survive if we continue to appease the Islamists.”

Sir Roger Scruton, born 27th February 1944

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Now Spring, sweet laxative of Georgian trains, 
Quickens the ink in literary veins, 
The Stately Homes of England ope their doors 
To piping nancy-boys and crashing Bores, 
Where for week-ends the scavengers of letters 
Convene to chew the fat about their betters.... 
Hither flock all the crowd whom love has wrecked 
Of intellectuals without intellect 
And sexless folk whose sexes intersect...

Roy Campbell

Campbell by Augustus John [1925]

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Britain in 1973. How did we fall so quickly?

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“Dons yelling ‘fascist’, at high table, at colleagues who in mild voices venture to disagree with them. What a rot & stink is left by liberalism devoid of religion!… Do you wonder that anyone who can get us out of this island? Though soon there will be nowhere to go to escape…”

J.R.R. Tolkien, letter to Michael Tolkien, 6th November 1956

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John Le Mesurier “It’s all been rather lovely.”

He wrote his own death notice in The Times which read: “John Le Mesurier wishes it to be known that he conked out on November 15th. He sadly misses family and friends.” Before he fell into a coma his last words were reported to have been “It’s all been rather lovely.”

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“We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers." 

Christopher Isherwood [born 26 August 1904] pictured with W.H. Auden [1937]

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"Among artists without talent Marxism will always be popular, since it enables them to blame society for the fact that nobody wants to hear what they have to say."

Clive James

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"Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny."

Sir Roger Scruton

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“Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.” 

Philip Larkin, born 9th August 1922

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God! I will pack, and take a train, And get me to England once again! For England’s the one land, I know, Where men with Splendid Hearts may go.

Rupert Brooke, born 3rd August 1887

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“If Bach is not in Heaven, I am not going!”

William F. Buckley, Jr.

Johann Sebastian Bach [31st March 1685 – 28th July 1750]

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Benedict Cumberbatch as Christopher Tietjens and Adelaide Clemens as Valentine Wannop in Parade’s End, based on the novels of Ford Madox Ford.

Christopher Tietjens: I love every field and hedgerow! The land is England, and once it was the foundation of order, before money took over and handed the country over to the swindlers and schemers. Toryism for the pigs trough.

Valentine Wannop: Then what is your Toryism?

Christopher Tietjens: Duty. Duty and service to above and below. Frugality. Keeping your word. Honouring the past. Looking after your people. And beggaring yourself if need be before letting duty go hang. If we’d have stayed out of it I’d have gone to France to fight for France. For agriculture against industrialism. For the 18th Century against the 20th, if you like. I hoped you’d understand?!

Valentine Wannop: Oh, I understand you, you’re as innocent about yourself as a child! You would have thought all the same things in the 18th Century! Christopher Tietjens: Of course I would, and I would’ve been right! 

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Bill Evans and Tony Bennett

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Tony Bennett RIP, 3rd August 1926 – 21st July 2023

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Jane Birkin [born 14 December 1946]

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Jane Birkin RIP

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“For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.” Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

July Fourteenth, Rue Daunou [1910] by Childe Hassam