I first began paying attention to Douglas Murray following the publication in 2006 of his book in defense of neoconservatism.

By that time, Murray, not yet 30 years of age, had already published a previous book and also

a play about the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Second World War,

Raoul Wallenberg.

Murray, of course, is not Jewish, but for as long as I've been observing his media appearances

and reading his articles, he's been one of the most clear-eyed defenders of Israel in the

British Public Square. He is an editor for The Spectator, a columnist at the Sun and the New York Post,

and is regularly interviewed as an analyst of politics and foreign affairs. But to see Douglas

as a political journalist alone is to miss what makes him distinctive.

He is a journalist.

He's a journalist who views events from a self-conscious and settled perspective.

He's a British defender of the patrimony and animating spirit of Western culture.

And he's unafraid to make judgments.

Those judgments he can defend on the grounds of the cultural patrimony he

loves. Does a given political proposal from Brussels advance or undermine the dignity of Britain

and the nations of Europe? Does a work of public architecture inspire nihilism or love of home

and communal integrity? Those are the questions that we rely on Douglas Murray to ask in articles and essays

to numerous account.

There are a few better educated writers about politics who draw on the full history of Western

music and drama and its visual arts, as well as its religious and philosophical traditions,

and its legal and constitutional histories.

He is, as we would call it in America, formed by a liberal education.

...