And so another solar orbit approaches its end. It has been an interesting twelve months, both in my life and in the world. Most notably, I found myself with a new job as assistant editor of The Freethinker magazine, which has been a delight and an honour so far. The world at large is not in such a happy state, however. In addition to all the horrors carried over from 2022, new horrors have arisen—above all, the war in Israel and Gaza started by the fascist thugs of Hamas.
I would like to re-share some of my thoughts from my final post of 2022. I think these sentiments are as necessary as ever to affirm:
So the universal paradox is this: we are nothing and we are everything. This reflection should inspire in us solidarity, for we are all we have. The universe is a void and we are a tiny point of warmth and light, and we should start acting like it. All tribal and ethnic and religious and political bigotry should evaporate immediately when this is understood. It won’t, of course, because, well, we are human, after all, but it’s an ideal worth fighting for, and we have come at least some way in attaining it already.
…
I realise that I have barely mentioned the events of the past 12 months. So let me just say, by way of ending, that 2022 was a year of horror and hope. As the bombs continue to fall over Ukraine and the resistance of the people of Iran against theocracy remains undimmed, I think this has been a good year to reassert the universal, in all possible meanings of that word.
In no particular order, here are the top books I read this year.
Karl Marx by Francis Wheen (1999). A fine biography of a much-misunderstood man by a fine writer. I am not a Marxist, but I do like the man Karl Marx quite a lot. For example, Wheen tells some funny stories about Marx’s drunken antics in London. These alone are worth the price of entry.
Victory City by Salman Rushdie (2023). Written before the attack on Rushdie in 2022 but published earlier this year, this is a lovely, lovely novel. It is also, in some ways, curiously prescient of what befell Rushdie in New York. Read my Freethinker review here.
The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian (2021). I disagree with some of Malkasian’s conclusions, but this is an excellent, comprehensive, and insightful history of America’s involvement in Afghanistan since 2001. You might be interested in a debate on Afghanistan I conducted with Harry McKenna for my first (and so far only) Den Debate. See here.
How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in and Age of Counter-Enlightenment by Matt Johnson (2023). My friend Matt’s first book—and hopefully not his last. I’ve written and spoken about it quite a lot, so I shall just recommend it without qualification here. See here and here for more.
The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos by Lawrence M. Krauss (2023). A thoroughly enjoyable tour of the remaining great scientific mysteries. See my Merion West review here and my interview with Krauss about the book here.
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (2022). A beautiful novel of love and sectarianism in 1990s Glasgow.
I’m cheating with two here (and there will be more cheating below): The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (2015) and The Russo-Ukrainian War (2023) by Serhii Plokhy. ‘Essential reading’ is a trite description, but these books, particularly the second one, really are. See my Merion West essay about the war against Ukraine, which doubles as a review of The Russo-Ukrainian War, here.
Orwell: The New Life by D.J. Taylor (2023). I have little else to say except that this is now the biography of the great and complicated man known as George Orwell. Read my Spectator Australia review here.
Abolish the Monarchy: Why We Should and How We Will by Graham Smith (2023). A well-written and comprehensive demolition of all the myths about our vaunted monarchy. Read my Freethinker review here and read my interview with Smith, also in The Freethinker, here.
Various by Martin Amis. I revisited some classic Amis after he died earlier this year, including the brilliant, hilarious, and dark novels Money: A Suicide Note (1984) and London Fields (1989). I also nourished myself with his non-fiction collection The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump and Other Pieces, 1994-2016 (2017).
Various by Charles Freeman. Freeman’s body of scholarly work is daunting (for example, Reopening—see below—covers more than 1,000 years of intellectual, political, philosophical, and scientific history; and along the way, he casually and understatedly demolishes Tom Holland’s silly view of Christianity). Luckily, he is as eminently readable as he is learned. Among his best books are The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (2002), The Reopening of the Western Mind: The Resurgence of Intellectual Life from the End of Antiquity to the Dawn of the Enlightenment (2020), and The Children of Athena: Greek Writers and Thinkers in the Age of Rome, 150 BC – AD 400 (2023). See here for my Freethinker interview with Freeman.
I’ve Been Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett (2023). An endlessly fascinating memoir by one of the world’s very best thinkers. Look out for my Freethinker interview with Dennett, coming soon.
I also want to give a special mention to the book I am currently reading: Olaf Stapledon’s science fiction novel/epic prose poem Star Maker (1937). This book was a gift from a friend and I have found it just astonishing so far.
And now for some self-promotion. Here are a few of my favourite pieces and discussions I published in the Den this year (excluding any linked to above):
‘(With Apologies to 'The Critic') Tears for God's Own Monster’, January 6. An attack on the then-recently deceased Joseph Ratzinger and his weird apologists.
‘Musings with Mathew: Den Discussion #2, with Mathew Giagnorio’, February 20.
‘Conversation with a Cosmopolitan: Den Discussion #3, with Iona Italia’, February 27. My dear friend (and former boss at Areo Magazine) Iona is now off to live permanently in Australia as an editor at Quillette. I shall miss her! But I know she will do very, very well. See below for a photo of us taken just a few days before she left.
‘Confab with a Conservative: Den Discussion #4, with Ben Sixsmith’, April 17.
‘A Very Silly Coronation Indeed’, May 5.
‘Tyranny in London: A Much Bigger Story than the Coronation’, May 6. This piece inspired an exchange with my monarchist friend Jamie Weir (published November 13), which we followed up with a Den Discussion (published November 20).
‘Den Discussion #6: Ranging Freely and Widely with the Anonymous Substacker Known as Ozkii’, August 7. This turned into a huge, sprawling, but extremely stimulating conversation. I hope we do it again.
‘Reflections on the 10th Anniversary of my Father's Death; Or, Of Grief and Gravity’, August 2021.
And here are a few of my favourite articles published in various outlets this year (again excluding anything linked to above):
‘Disestablish it for its own good: The Church of England and gay marriage’, OnlySky, January 18. See here for an amusing epilogue to this piece.
‘Did it work? Iraq 20 years after the US invasion’, OnlySky, March 20.
‘Uganda’s ‘kill the gays’ bill and (particularly American) Christianity’s enduring power to compel evil’, OnlySky, March 27.
‘On Literary Science and the Bounds of Knowledge’, Merion West, April 27. Yes, I linked to this above, but I can’t help but include it here. I think this might just be my finest piece of writing yet, and I am very proud of it.
‘The virtues of vice’, The Critic, May 3.
‘On the Necessity of Enlightenment’, A Further Inquiry, May 19.
‘In Defence of Degeneracy’, Queer Majority, August 23.
‘Faith Watch, November 2023’, The Freethinker, November 7.
‘“This rebarbative profession” – Rory Stewart’s ‘Politics on the Edge’, reviewed’, The Freethinker, November 28.
And finally, I appeared on Freethought Hour on October 27 to discuss various topics, including my background, my role at The Freethinker, and my proposal for regime change in Iran. See here.
And that, then, is a wrap. Dark and scary as the world most certainly was in 2023, I hope you have a wonderful 2024. Daniel’s Den will be taking a break for the rest of the year but I will be back on January 8, 2024. See you on the other side!