From: OO@AA.COM   
      
   I noticed in the Spectator that Scruton's magazine 'The Salisbury Review' is   
   doing a special issue on how '..Multiculturalism is destroying British   
   Culture.'   
   Naturally I was up for that and so rang the magazine up to find out where it   
   was sold. A cold female upper class voice answered:   
      
   'Hello?'   
   'Is that the Salisbury Review?'   
   'It is.'   
   'Is your magazine available in the shops?'   
      
   That did it: '..in the shops.' Voice gets icier with a slight tetch:   
      
   'Well no not really but you can get it in Borders in Charing Cross Road.'   
   'Wonderful. Cheers!'   
   'Mmmmm. Thank you.'   
      
   I looked it up on the web: Thatcher likes it. Oh dear. Still, according to   
   Theodore Dalrymple, who appalls and enthralls by turns, it says things other   
   people wouldn't dare, which, in these evil times, must be good. In the end,   
   I still see conservatives as being people who think money is more important   
   than people.   
      
   I noticed on their web site they were doing something called Conservative   
   Classics and that issue was Treasure Island. Is Treasure Island a   
   conservative classic? Funnily enough I've been reading it recently and have   
   enjoyed it greatly. also funnily enough I was thinking last week what a   
   field day a Marxist or a committed socialist would have with the text. Never   
   mind John Silver having charismatic anti-heroic ways about him, it would be   
   all the other way for a full-on lefty: wicked Squire Trelawny, greedy Jim   
   Hawkins, imperious Dr Livesey (taking a line with Billy Bones not unlike   
   Theodore Dalrymple would I imagine) and all those servile fools like Gray   
   and Joyce and Redruth. Eric Frogspawn would be rooting for the poor   
   benighted buccaneers who have taken matters into their own hands with   
   banditry on the high seas. Disabled people (Silver, Pew), alcoholics (Bones,   
   Flint), oppressed and frequently unemployed workers (Black Dog, Israel Hands   
   and Ben Gunn).   
    The book is bloody good though. Stevenson considered fiction writing no   
   more than an adult version of 'play' but he could play well all right. The   
   whole thing is so alive and believable. There are so many little touches but   
   a few come to mind: Sliver talking about a broadside on and old voyage in   
   which 'Pew lost his deadlights.' In one line that breaths so much life into   
   an already vivid and kicking plot. The bit where Billy Bones chases Black   
   Dog out and lands his cutlass in the frame of the Admiral Benbow's sign   
   where 'you may see the notch on the lower side of the frame to this day.'   
   And when Doctor Livesey is leaving the Hispaniola and drops all the arms and   
   powder they can't carry over the side 'in two fathoms and a half of water,   
   so that we could see the bright steel shining far below us in the sun, on   
   the clean, sandy bottom.'   
    These are just a few examples of vivid and clever fictional brushwork in a   
   book full of them. The story would be good without them, but they are the   
   things that that really breathe life throught it. It is also done very   
   unobtrusively, so you suddenly drop back and think, 'how bloody inspired.'   
      
   http://robbie.journalspace.com/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)