Theodore Dalrymple - The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World

THE WILDER SHORES OF MARX

Journeys in a Vanishing World

Theodore Dalrymple

Monday Books

www.mondaybooks.com

Theodore Dalrymple, 2012

First published as by Anthony Daniels in 1991by Hutchinson

The right of Theodore Dalrymple to beidentified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordancewith the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. Apart from any usepermitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwisecirculated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it ispublished and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequentpurchaser

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CONTENTS

ABOUT THEAUTHOR

Author, doctor, psychiatrist and journalistTheodore Dalrymple was born in London in 1949 to a German mother and Russianfather. After qualifying as a doctor in 1974, he chose to travel and take histrade to the far flung shores of Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa and the Gilbert Islands. When he returned to the United Kingdom he worked in the East End of Londonand then inner city Birmingham in a hospital and the nearby prison. His medicalwork has brought him into contact with drug addicts and alcoholics, careercriminals and sex offenders, the mentally disturbed and battered wives andtheir lives have inspired him to write. He has also appeared as an expertwitness in numerous murder trials.

Dalrymple has written widely and regularlyfor publications as diverse as The Spectator, The New Statesman, The Times,The Times Literary Supplement, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, TheSunday Times, and The British Medical Journal, as well as manyprestigious American magazines and newspapers.

He also writes under his real name AnthonyDaniels. Now retired from medical work, he is still a prolific writer anddivides his time between the UK and France.

Praise for Theodore Dalrymple

'The harsh truths he tells are all the moreshocking because the media, in general, is unwilling to tell them'

Daily Telegraph

Dalrymples clarity of thought, precision ofexpression and constant, terrible disappointment give his dispatches from thefrontline a tone and a quality entirely their own their rarity makes you situp and take notice

The Spectator

'He actually cares about the people at thebottom of the social heap while public sector jobsworths and slimy politiciansonly pretend to'

Daily Express

'He could not be further from the stereotypeof the 'little Englander' conservative he is arguably our greatest livingessayist'

Standpoint

Dalrymples is the crystal voice of reason.

Literary Review

ALSO BY THEODORE DALRYMPLE

THE POLICEMAN AND THE BROTHEL

A Victorian Murder

Deep in the bleak winter of 1846...

Jersey is home totens of thousands of rough-and-ready sailors, who spend their time drinking,chasing loose women and gambling through the teeming and chaotic streets.

On the mainland, the Metropolitan Policehas only just been born. On Jersey, the job of keeping order in the crowdeddockside tenements, raucous brothels and riotous public houses still falls toelected centeniers such as the respected and feared George Le Cronier.

There have already been two brutal murderson the island in the last couple of weeks. And now Le Cronier is on his way toarrest the madame of a notorious brothel...

The Policeman and the Brothel tells the true story of what came next one of the most gruesomeand notorious murders the island has seen.

IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST

A series of short, often very funny,vignettes about Dalrymples work as a doctor in an inner-city hospital and aBritish prison.

Axe-wielding maniacs, 'arthuritis' sufferersand apple crumble-cooking rapists... they're all here, along with avariciouslawyers, empire-building bureaucrats and the poor, huddled masses of the slumnear the hospital where Dalrymple works.

The Kindle version also includes storiesfrom his follow up book 'If Symptoms Still Persist.'

LIFE ATTHE BOTTOM

In this timeless and beautifully-written assortmentof essays, looking at crime, culture and the collapse of the British way oflife from an unashamedly conservative perspective Dalrymple lays the blamesquarely on the shoulders of the liberal intellectuals, who tend 'not to meanquite what they say, and express themselves more to flaunt the magnanimity oftheir intentions than to propagate truth.'

SECOND OPINION

In Second Opinion Theodore Dalrymplelays bare a secret, brutal world hidden to most of us.

Drug addicts and desperate drunks, batteredwives and suicidal burglars, elderly Alzheimer's sufferers and teenage stabbingvictims. They all pass through his surgery.

Its the tragic world of Baby P andShannon Matthews a place where the merest perceived insult leads to murder,where jealous men beat and strangle their women and where anyone will doanything for ten bags of brown.

In unflinchingly honest prose, shot throughwith insight, feeling and bleak humour, Dalrymple exposes the unseen horror ofour modern slums as never before.

OUR CULTURE, WHATS LEFT OF IT

A searing and elegantly-composedindictiment of what he sees as the betrayal of the poor by an intellectualelite, led to Dalrymple being called the new Orwell by American critics. Dalrymplewrites about subjects as diverse as the legalisation of drugs, the death ofPrincess Diana and Marxism.

THEEXAMINED LIFE

'Why are you wearing that face mask?' askedone of the security guards.

'Germs, of course,' I said. 'Ubiquitous -they're everywhere.'

'They are for us, too,' he said, 'and we'renot wearing masks.'

This was exactly the same argument as thedoctor uses.

'What consolation was it to the victims ofthe Black Death that there were millions of other victims?' I said.

'The Black Death?' said the security guardto his colleague. 'What's he on about?'

A brief and witty satire on contemporaryhealth and safety culture by world-renowned doctor-writer Theodore Dalrymple.The unnamed anti-hero is a man who takes to heart every tabloid newspaperhealth scare, guards himself against every conceivable illness and worriesendlessly about his mortality. He wears protective clothing to go shopping whenhe can't shop on-line and every inch of unprotected skin is smeared in variouscreams and lotions. Unfortunately, his caution is his eventual undoing as thiselegantly written and amusing novella reaches its climax.

The Examined Life is a satire on ourobsession with health, safety and peanuts.

ANYTHING GOES

Britain and theWest are mired in a culture of untruth, wilful blindness andideologically-motivated deceit, argues Theodore Dalrymple in this collection ofbrilliant and beautifully-written essays. This has had a variety of effects -some trivial, others less so. From political correctness among doctors to theruinous failures of the World Health Organisation, from riots in London to sexchanges for 12-year-olds, from the end of free speech to the strange fury ofevangelical atheists, and from the collapse of our bubble economy to thefailure of the criminal justice system, it all goes back to the death ofhonesty.