The Skeptical DoctorDedicated to the work of Theodore DalrympleMenuSkip to contentHomeAn Interesting LifeAn Online ReaderQuotationsSpeeches and InterviewsSubscriptionWhy Theodore Dalrymple is For All TimeWorkAdmirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines MoralityAnything GoesCoups and Cocaine: Two Journeys in South AmericaFarewell FearFilosofa’s RepublicFool or Physician: The Memoirs of a Skeptical DoctorIf Symptoms PersistIn Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived IdeasLife at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the UnderclassLitter: How Other People’s Rubbish Shapes Our LifeMass Listeria & An Intelligent Person’s Guide to MedicineMonrovia, Mon Amour: A Visit to LiberiaMr Clarke’s Modest Proposal: Supportive Evidence from YeovilNot With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of DeclineOur Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the MassesProfeten en Charlatans: Hoe Schrijvers Ons de Wereld Laten ZienRomancing Opiates & Junk MedicineSecond OpinionSo Little Done: The Testament of a Serial KillerSpoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of SentimentalitySweet Waist of America: Journeys Around GuatemalaThe Examined LifeThe New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to BarbarismThe Pleasure of Thinking: A Journey through the Sideways Leaps of IdeasThe Policeman & the BrothelThe Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing WorldZanzibar to TimbuktuBushmeat and MetrophobiaBy Clinton on August 1, 2015  |  Filed in Essays  | 2 comments so farDalrymple has long expressed a special respect and liking for Africans, and a recent visit to an African restaurant offers another occasion to express it, as described in this piece in The Salisbury Review:My welcome was warm, however, and my praise of the food (which was sincere) pleased the owners no end. But I have no ambition or qualification to be a restaurant critic: what I really wanted to mention was the music played, not very loud, over the public address system in the restaurant. It was West African popular music that no doubt has a certain monotony after a time, but which nevertheless conveys a joie de vivre, an enjoyment of and tenderness towards life, that is so missing in our own popular music. It lifts the spirit, it does not depress: one does not want to stop one’s ears from it.If a Martian were to descend to earth and were played West African and our own popular music and then asked which represented the higher civilisation, I have no doubt what answer he would return.Share this:FacebookTwitterRedditGoogleEmailPrintGluttons for PunishmentBy Clinton on July 30, 2015  |  Filed in Essays  | 2 comments so farThe rarity of a treat is the source of its specialness, but in our age of abundance some of us turn the rare into the regular. For example, take our food (please!):Things [ie. type 2 diabetes rates] are worse in Britain and America, of course, than anywhere else, because the populations of those two great nations, having