What is Wrong with Us?

Subtitled 'essays in cultural pathology', this volume embodies serious social, aesthetic and political criticism in an age where judgements of value are suspect and relativised in what one might call the corruption of criticism. High culture and judgements based on expert knowledge are considered elitist, while much of what passes for art would have scandalised previous generations - to think that Tracey Emin is a Royal Academician along with the likes of Constable and Turner… The book covers a wide range of themes, including architecture, engineering, language, values, politics, State art, celebrity culture and the decline of the sacred. Many essays are justifiably acerbic, especially the very entertaining contributions by Theodore Dalrymple on architecture and on celebrity. He regards Le Corbusier as an intellectual and moral terrorist and is not reticent in confronting complacent views. Then he considers celebrity culture as a contract between persons of modest attainments on the one hand and masses of frustrated people on the other. Other essays expose the shallowness of so-called British values and the relationship between politics, language and spin as well as the pretence and posturing inherent in much modern art, defended by state-sponsored councils. Even more seriously, the last essay on conserving the sacred remarks that all societies, including secular ones, depend on sacrifice, commitment and devotion for their survival. A thought-provoking collection.