A Literary Patrimony

“Bread” came alive one afternoon in our nursery. Having just read Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird together, my father, my sisters, and I created a dramatization of it in which the character “Bread” assumed a life of his own. In this play, two children wander...

The Youthful Writings of Russell Kirk

The scribblings of Russell Kirk, as teenager and pre-teen, reveal a widely read, precocious and imaginative young man. Among the remnants of youth which are preserved one may find vastly detailed drawings of Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and all sorts of adventure...

Mr. Conservative

Dr. Russell Kirk is to American conservatism what Edmund Burke was to British conservatism. My equation is a product of the catalyst of history. Before Burke stood up to the savagery and barbarism of the French Revolution, not one man in all Europe raised so...

Death of a Giant

A tribute to Russell KirkWith the death of Russell Kirk on April 29th at the age of 75, American conservatism has lost one of its true giants. Prior to the middle of the twentieth century, by far the most powerful conservative force in the United States was the...

An Augustine for Our Age

I first met Russell Kirk when a professor of mine took me to the Kirk home—Piety Hill—in the winter of 1985. Shortly after that I attended an ISIPiety Hill seminar on renewing the higher learning with Dr. Kirk, Stephen Tonsor, and Gerhart Niemeyer presiding. I was a...

Russell Kirk: An Appreciation

Samuel Johnson remarked once that we need to be reminded more often than we need to be instructed. It is a wise observation. The greatness of Russell Kirk’s achievement consisted in his surpassing ability to remind us of those permanent truths of the human condition;...