Megan Dent

Anglican. Mother. Centrist. Writer. Academic. Lover of choral music.

[The Critic @TheCriticMag]

Justified dissatisfaction with liberal modernity has curdled into something alarmist and authoritarian, writes @Denote_mega

https://t.co/Cxvmd3C4O3

[The Critic @TheCriticMag]

“Leo Strauss had it that the rejection of “natural rights” — or call it objective truth — led ultimately to nihilism. In the age of proliferating alternative truths, AI deep fakes, and cultural malaise, it feels like Strauss was on to something.”

✍️ |🦊 @Denote_mega
https://t.co/U5mMCDxayP

[The Critic @TheCriticMag]

“Refreshingly, this is not a book written merely to echo within an already noisy chamber.”

@Denote_mega reviews aura K. Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right.
https://t.co/Cxvmd3C4O3

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

"Or as Aristotle percipiently noted in a different context, one swallow does not a summer make."

Brilliant from @Docstockk rofl

https://t.co/nGxhQJNH5k

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

My latest review for @thedispatch on a book that I wanted to like but, alas. Arguing that the right caricatures the left (fair) with language dripping with contempt for a thoroughly caricatured right sort of ruined it for me.

https://t.co/QpOncTy925

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

@historykev Thank you for reading and sharing

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

In Do Not Go Gentle, @Docstockk implores us to imagine the moral repercussions on a society when the difference between dying and killing has been collapsed.

Here's my review in @thedispatch

https://t.co/iMUW6mwlp8

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

I am so sad to learn of the death over the weekend of the great scholar David Abulafia, CBE, Professor of Mediterranean History, at Cambridge who was both an outstanding historian of world history, author of several masterpieces and also an academic who campaigned for free speech and against antiJewish racism in the public realm.
His two master works The Great Sea a Human History of the Mediterranean and The Boundless Sea a Human History of the Oceans – along with his earlier Frederick II – were outstanding works of literature and scholarship, distinguished by a genuine, rarely-equalled polymathic knowledge of world history and culture, a superb instinct for anecdote and data, and a beautiful writing style, breathtaking span and depth and boldness of vision. The books are remarkable and peerless - when i read them, I couldnt put them down and I recommend them as both entertainment and scholarship - that rare and golden combination that so few can deliver.

His histories stressed human life and humanism – and he himself was the heir to some of the worlds he wrote about: he was the scion of an ancient Sephardic dynasty of Jewish rabbis and leaders, starting in medieval Andalus and Castile, including a Jewish chief minister of King Pedro the Cruel, poets, kabbalists, merchants from Cordoba and Toledo to Constantinople Thessalonica and Jerusalem including a succession of famed charismatic rabbis of Tiberias and Safed.

He was a famed scholar in the tradition of the great pedagogues, discursive and genial, thoughtful and playful, patient and generous to pupils and friends, confident of his expertise, charmingly diffident and even shy at times, but with a lightning intellect that shattered vanities, pieties and hypocrisies, a fearless moral sense that could not tolerate any sort of intolerant authoritarianism, and a reverence for history that would not brook its distortion and corruption in the cause of self-righteous ideologies.

Gentle, scholarly and genial as he was he was also warm and funny - and bold and fearless. British academia has lost a unique and brilliant scholar and voice, British society and discourse are already missing a towering intellect, an irreplaceable jewel. Caius College and Cambridge itself has lost a titan of history.

And I have lost a friend and a mentor (he generously read and corrected my book The World).
Condolences to Anna, Bianca, Rosa and family. The books will be timeless. May his memory be a blessing.

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

For @Telegraph I argue that the courageous Iranian women lighting their cigarettes from burning photos of the Ayatollah don’t get the same infinite mercy and celebration as trendier and more anti-Western social causes.

https://t.co/wI3kIo4WAq

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

✍️ 'You won’t find Billie Eilish or Javier Bardem sporting symbols of Iranian liberation on the red carpet or pop stage' | Writes Megan Dent

Read the column ⬇️
https://t.co/CW20GvCWTo

[Clarissa Hard @Clarissa_Hard_]

‘While the women of Iran are taking back the streets, the women of Islington are tutting into their margaritas.’

My latest @spectator article on the Western feminists who remain shamefully silent in the face of true heroism

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

For @Telegraph I wrote about the dangerous consequences of managerialism and bureaucracy in NHS maternity practice

#NHS #maternity #policy #frontlineworkers #Medical

https://t.co/61S95vhKSi

[The Critic @TheCriticMag]

“Democracy is undoubtedly better preserved when Christians are better at following Christ” — We need better Christians and better democracy, argues @Megan_Rose_619
https://t.co/mxpMhpCH9S

[Katie Herzog @kittypurrzog]

I was pleasantly surprised to see this review of my book in @TheCriticMag https://t.co/rAE8l3JKZN

[The Critic @TheCriticMag]

A new book convincingly argues that it is time to rethink our approach to alcoholism, writes @Megan_Rose_619
https://t.co/EHGvscICL5

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

For @thedispatch I argue that critical theory is less effective at widening access to Classics than, as one source put it, "Mrs Miggins in her broom cupboard with three students at the lunch hour."

#Classics #Education

https://t.co/7HmIKRFvrj

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

Celebrated, indeed, and never taken for granted

[Church Times @ChurchTimes]

The peaceful transfer of power from one government to another is “fragile” and should be celebrated, the Archbishop of Canterbury @JustinWelby told MPs and peers on Tuesday https://t.co/1EyoEbIfKn

[Paula Gooder @paulargooder]

Few theologians have had as much impact on me as Jurgen Moltmann has. Didn’t always agree with him but did always appreciate the new horizons he made it possible to contemplate.
1926-2024 May he rest in peace.

[Malcolm Guite @malcolmguite]

Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today  the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
Our Mother-tongue Is Love; A Sonnet for #Pentecost https://t.co/4hIdMkQMHV

[Megan Dent @Denote_mega]

“Downstream of their posturing, children were irreversibly harmed. They didn’t care; they wanted to look kinder than you.” @moveincircles is soaring in this essay.

[Mary Harrington @moveincircles]

In the light of the Cass Review, the Sensibles are now frantically rewriting what they all believed all along

They should not be allowed to forget how wrong they got it

Me at @unherd https://t.co/QuZYcmwLlC