The Unrecorded Man

The name ‘The Unrecorded Man’ comes from a generic character in Paul Scott’s ‘Raj Quartet’ novels. I came to it via a John Derbyshire review of those novels.

I used to be mildly and unthinkingly left-wing, along with everyone else who has been bamboozled by the BBC and the Guardian. I now detest everything about the Left, including their causes, their righteous posturing, their vilification of anyone who disagrees with them, and their insistence that we feel solidarity for people we neither know nor care about, including criminals, the idle and the selfish.

I would love to turn the clocks back to a time before government interfered so much in people's lives. Governments are necessary but should be as small as possible.

I think mass immigration has fractured British society and left us all disorientated about who we are.

I almost never read newspapers but when I do I read the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Taki's Magazine, the spectator and VDARE are all good online magazines.

John Derbyshire, Mark Steyn, Douglas Murray, Ed West, Victor Davis Hanson and George Jonas are my favourite political writers while Peter Whittle and Theodore Dalrymple are my favourite social commentators.

The little I know about economics tells me that Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell should run every country's finances, and probably their governments too.

I love Pat Condell’s videos and if you don't like reading, watch his social commentary videos instead.

Elvis Costello is my favourite singer/songwriter but I hate his anti-Thatcher and anti-Israel stance. I like The Stranglers, XTC, Sparks and many others.

Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene, H.G. Wells and Kingsley Amis are my favourite fiction writers. I also like the poetry of Robert Frost, Philip Larkin and T.S. Eliot’s heavy stuff, though not the nonsense about cats.

My favourite kind of film is suspense, especially from the 1960s and 1970s. Harrison Ford also made several good thrillers in the 1980's. I will watch Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins in almost anything. Strangely there are very few actresses whose films I actively seek out, though I like Maria Schell and Julie Christie.

I work in Japan for 7 months of the year and holiday in England for the other 5. Japan has so much to teach the West about parenting, teaching, consideration for others and genuine humility but the West is not listening.