Just got my author copies of the upcoming (September) issue of The New Criterion. It’s a 25th anniversary bumper issue, full of good stuff. Our own Andy McCarthy has a good piece (Andy’s first appearance in TNC, I think). Jay Nordlinger offers his regular demonstration that he knows the world of serious music better than you know your own face. Roger Scruton scrutinizes the National Question from a British and European viewpoint. David Pryce-Jones does a masterful historical tour de force on nationalism and anti-nationalism. Jim Bowman tosses and gores the New York Times in his media column. David Yezzi writes about a longtime favorite of mine, the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. (I used to sit reading it in the local library while my daughter frolicked in the play area.) The poems include an instance of narrative verse, a genre I thought long dead. (If you don’t have the Oxford Book of Narrative Verse on your shelf, you should have. And I should be getting commission from OUP here.) … The supply of good things–including poems you can actually read with enjoyment–seems inexhaustible. Congratulations to all on the masthead for a really terrific issue.