There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity. - A. C. Grayling

This brings into focus a startling fact: that the practice of contemporary reviewing, whether fiction or non-fiction, owes nothing to self-styled “critical theorists”, those succubi of English Literature departments whose jargonings are read (if they are read at all) only by one another, and who have contributed nothing to the wider world since they hijacked the academic study of literature from its original Quiller-Couchian purpose: which was to educate, liberate, and civilise.
The reason is that the professionalisation of the academy has diverted its form of criticism away from engagement with life.

Prudery expresses itself most forcibly as censorship.

We can therefore all demand apologies from one another for mankind’s turpitude. But it is better worth remembering that we poison the present by our self-imposed slavery to unforgivingness over offences of the past—and that this explains almost all conflicts, from Northern Ireland via the Balkans to Kashmir. That is a form of slavery which we desperately need to abolish too.