On the Right

New York, Jan. 18—When times get really difficult in England, two things typically happen. One set of people talks about how bad things really are. And another set writes about how prettily the nightingales are singing. Thus it was, for instance, in World War II, when the lights went out but permitted us to appreciate the distinctive whiteness of the cliffs of Dover. So it is today, when England—no kidding—teeters on the brink of the greatest parliamentary crisis since the general strike of the Twenties. And poetic England responds . . .

“. . . Nature has provided us with a succession of green dawns,” writes the novelist Margaret Drabble from London for the New York Times. “There has been an enormous moon gazing out of a silver sky, surrounded by stars the size of those in a nativity painting. One doesn’t notice them so well, perhaps, when the street lighting is more powerful. The lights may have gone out on Oxford Street, but Oxford Street is horrible at the best of times, and elsewhere it is the brightest winter ever.”

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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New York, Jan. 18—When times get really difficult in England, two things typically happen. One set of people talks about how bad things really are. And another set writes about how prettily the nightingales are singing. Thus it was, for instance, in World War II, when the lights went out but permitted us to appreciate the distinctive whiteness of the cliffs of Dover. So it is today, when England—no kidding—teeters on the brink of the greatest parliamentary crisis since the general strike of the Twenties. And poetic England responds . . .

“. . . Nature has provided us with a succession of green dawns,” writes the novelist Margaret Drabble from London for the New York Times. “There has been an enormous moon gazing out of a silver sky, surrounded by stars the size of those in a nativity painting. One doesn’t notice them so well, perhaps, when the street lighting is more powerful. The lights may have gone out on Oxford Street, but Oxford Street is horrible at the best of times, and elsewhere it is the brightest winter ever.”