Tag Archives: Theodore Dalrymple

QE2 is dead, long live Charles

Posted on September 9, 2022 by David Brussat

Anglophilia runs deep in this corner. Not because Great Britain has a royal family but because it has embraced Western civilization more than any nation. This fact explains its reign as Europe’s most powerful and influential country for centuries, nationally … Continue reading →

Posted in Other countries | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Bad language/bad buildings

Posted on June 14, 2021 by David Brussat

There is a difference between language and architecture. Language, to riff off the saying attributed to Talleyrand, aims to disguise the absence of thought; whereas architecture aims to express the thoughtlessness of fatuous design. The critic Theodore Dalrymple, a retired … Continue reading →

Posted in Art and design | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Comparing Italy and Britain

Posted on March 11, 2020 by David Brussat

What makes a good society? Part of the answer is good architecture. Yet the good that is done by good architecture reaches well beyond beauty. Good architecture does much to create the conditions in which health, prosperity and happiness grow. … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

A new prize in architecture

Posted on December 22, 2019 by David Brussat

ArchNewsNow.com – the indispensable source of architecture commentary from around the world – is running a series responding to a petition by British architecture students dismayed at the reluctance of architecture schools to become more involved in political issues, especially … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture Education | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Dalrymple: Curl’s ‘Dystopia’

Posted on June 11, 2019 by David Brussat

Theodore Dalrymple, the British prison doctor, psychiatrist and social critic, has written several reviews of James Stevens Curl’s book Making Dystopia, the most detailed and penetrating history of modern architecture written thus far. Each of Dalrymple’s several reviews seems intended … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Architecture’s Three Stooges

Posted on September 30, 2018 by David Brussat

Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician, psychiatrist and theorist of society, culture and design, has written a review of James Stevens Curl’s new book Making Dystopia for the New English Review. Dalrymple calls the book “essential, uncompromising, learned,” and especially devastating … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Beyond translation indeed!

Posted on August 13, 2018 by David Brussat

It takes an act of will to make it all the way through a passage of hilariously sublime bureaucratese – quoted from a university prospectus – sent recently by architectural historian James Stevens Curl to a group of his friends … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

The uses of preservation

Posted on January 12, 2018 by David Brussat

“The Uses of Corruption” is an essay by Theodore Dalrymple published in the Summer 2001 issue of City Journal, the quarterly of the Manhattan Institute. Dalrymple is a British sociologist and commentator who argues that Italy is more prosperous and … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

World’s best new building!

Posted on January 22, 2017 by David Brussat

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Best new building in the world! You can tell that Theodore Dalrymple, who wrote “A modern Machu Picchu” for the Salibury Review, is not an architecture critic. There is too much common sense … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Humor | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Kimmelman swoops Whitney

Posted on April 24, 2015 by David Brussat

It took Theodore Dalrymple, an essayist for the Manhattan Institute’s splendid quarterly, City Journal, to pull back the curtain on the operatic vapidity of New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. The latter has written his architectural review of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture History, Art and design, Development, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment