A look back at 2021, year of the clown. Blessings for 2022, year of the tiger.

Happy New Year! 🥳

A year ago today I emailed a bunch of old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in many years, to tell them I had started a newsletter and asking them to subscribe. It was a significant step for me because I was ‘coming out’ a) as a writer, something I had resisted being all my life; and b) as someone who was not in any way in political alignment with most of the people I was emailing.

Twelve months later, on a day that naturally lends itself to reflection, I can say that I am both quite proud of the work I have done and most grateful to all the people who have read or listened to me along the way.

So I end 2021 most of all with a feeling of gratitude. Don’t get me wrong, this year was an absolute shit show on many, many levels. From the crazed weeping and nashing of teeth from supposed professionals who rule over us; to the vicious and deeply unscientific forced vaccinations of healthy children and young people; or the unbelievably creepy interface between mind-control porn (yes, really) and the prevalence of transgenderism. 2021 was a sinister clown world, really. Not even Joker could think up such diabolical garbage to inflict on hapless Gothamites.

But 2021 was also a year in which I learned so much. The most illuminating books I read were Anthony Sutton’s The Wall Street Trilogy (excerpted here), That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, and Milkman by Anna Burns.

2021 was also a year in which I wrote a book (any editors or publishers out there, give me a shout, it’s great 🤣), made several television appearances and sat down for a very pleasant chat with a person on the opposite end of the political spectrum as me.

On a more personal note, 2021 was — for me — a year filled with love. From those closest to me (human and canine) and from everyone who took the time to comment, like and buy subscriptions to this Substack.

Hence the gratitude.

If you permit me one more indulgence, I would like to end with the beginning: words I wrote at the end of last year, in one of my first Substack newsletters. Every word remains, for me, true.

Another reason you should subscribe? Culture needs saving. I’m particularly well-placed to make this case. Not because I’m famous or have a PhD in it or I’m some special genius. I’ve just seen, and lived, and experienced, and read, and worked, and failed and had many different lives, started over and rebuilt and done it all over again, and that’s given me perspective, and wisdom. And that wisdom tells me we are witnessing the rotting away of an old, corrupted system no longer fit for the purpose of communal enlightenment and togetherness, which is what culture should do for its people. Now, we, the people, are browbeaten and guilt-tripped and mislead and mischaracterised by a Hunger Games-like elite which holds the levers of cultural production in a clammy death-grip. No longer do the high and low classes revel together in the drama of Shakespeare, or all enjoy a frisson of excitement watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show or even mope about with our hair in front of our spotty faces listening to the Smiths or the Cure. No. Now all is in submission to whatever is the moral mandate of the day. Teen fervour has been coopted and weaponised: whether into climate extinction hysteria, or huge controversy over eyebrow influencers, or race and gender politics — it’s no longer allowed to be spent worshipping naughty rock stars and rebelling, which is a pity. High culture too must ostentatiously demonstrate its fealty and virtue to whatever the new world order seems to be.

I want this orthodoxy to go away. In the words of the great George Carlin, “it’s stupid bullshit, and it’s bad for ya.”

Have a wonderful New Year’s everyone! I’ll be back in your inboxes in about two weeks time.