Present Concerns

A collection of nineteen short essays, mostly written for newspapers and magazines, edited with a preface by Walter Hooper and published by Collins in London in 1986 as a Fount paperback. The pieces deal with public and social questions: 'The Necessity of Chivalry', 'Equality', 'Three Kinds of Men', 'Democratic Education', 'Is English Doomed?', 'Blimpophobia', 'Private Bates', 'Hedonics', 'After Priggery - What?', 'Modern Man and His Categories of Thought', 'Talking about Bicycles', 'On Living in an Atomic Age', 'The Empty Universe', 'Prudery and Philology', 'Interim Report', 'Is History Bunk?' and 'Sex in Literature', together with 'My First School' and 'A Dream'. Several were later reprinted in Compelling Reason (1996).