THE BRITISH UNDERCLASSDalrymple's great subject is the underclass – he's worked with them for years as a doctor in an inner city area and in prisons, he knows what he's talking about, this is a guy I respect, and he's thrusting before our horrified faces the terrible facts of the matter. He sounds like a right wing git half of the time but maybe I'm turning into a right wing git because mostly I think he's got it dead right but sometimes he's just like a slightly more intellectual Jeremy Clarkso...

Blames the poor for their poverty.A taste of it here: https://www.city-journal.org/html/wha...There's a (white) underclass in England. As it was 100 years ago, described in The People of the Abyss by Jack London, the underclass is people "the work of the world does not need."Unlike in 1905, England's underclass doesn't slowly die of malnutrition, exposure, and overwork in poor houses.England still has welfare.To our current author, it's /because/ of welfare that the lives of the underclass are m...

I loved this book so much it's hard to know where to begin. Theodore Dalrymple, a physician and writer specializing social pathology in Britain (everything he writes about in Britain also applies to the U.S. in spades, BTW), brilliantly describes the rising numbers and overwhelmingly ubiquitous of nature societal ills and how and they've become so prevalent since the 1960s. If you've ever looked around and thought, Gosh, why are so many more people on welfare, addicted to drugs, illiterate, born...

Dalrymple worked in an inner city 'slum' hospital and prisons. His choice, so he obviously liked the patients and writes of the trials and tribulations that keep them living in such conditions, often contentedly because they know no better and don't know want to know either. He blames the socialist state and the modern no-blame, no-shame, no-judgement culture for this. He is discussing his prison patients, on asking them what they'd done, they often reply, oh just a normal burglary, just a norma...

"If the doctor has a duty to relieve the suffering of his patients, he must have some idea where that suffering comes from, and this involves the retention of judgment, including moral judgment.And if, as far as he can tell in good faith, the misery of his patients derives from the way they live, he has a duty to tell them so—which often involves a more or less explicit condemnation of their way of life as completely incompatible with a satisfying existence. By avoiding the issue, the doctor i

You see. I’ve had a Dalrymple experience and it was like this. My doctor has his rooms in a Dalrymple part of town. Everybody who goes in looks like they’ve either just come out of a stretch, or they’ve just been sentenced to one…or might even on the run from one. The older women clearly all have sons whom they might even be visiting that very afternoon in the slammer. I’m the only one, I deduce, who has never set foot in gaol. Oh. There is that time I was put in gaol in Slovakia, but I’m not co...

I probably wouldn’t have like this book if I had read it in California. I wasn’t exactly a bleeding-heart liberal, but I acted outraged when Bill Clinton reformed the welfare system. Only a heartless conservative would be against providing subsistence to the weak and the vulnerable. I had enough compassion in me, like any other yuppie, not to want to see those poor single moms thrown out in the cold. I couldn’t believe people had fallen for Ronald Reagan’s myth of Cadillac-driving welfare queens...

Dalrymple makes his points early on in the book, then spends the rest spewing countless anecdotes which supposedly prove them. Interesting stuff such as the passive phrases violent people use ("the knife went in...") can't make up for the fact that the author is clearly out to put all the blame on 'progressives' and 'liberals'. He makes it seem like a kind of conspiracy: liberals were and are out to destroy society.A very tiresome read.

Electrifying essays by a conservative thinker who has seen the urban poor up close in the UK's worst slums -- and is terrified by what the future holds!I'm giving this book five stars, not because I agree with all of it, but because Theodore Dalrymple is a brilliant writer and a master of persuasive logic. He's a distinctive voice among the daredevil conservative thinkers who rule the sky in that flamboyant Flying Circus of political commentary known as NATIONAL REVIEW magazine. Please understan...

I find this really hard to give a star rating to because I completely disagree with his politics, yet I devoured the book and really enjoyed it - "hate reading" as @gbaker called it. Kind of a guilty pleasure like watching Jeremy Kyle (this book has a lot in common with that show).Anyway, I thought I'd list things that the author doesn't like:IntellectualsModernismThe sexual revolutionGovernmentBureaucratsPolice (well, not the concept, but how they are so politically correct these days)Political...

When I am dictator, which hopefully will be any day now, I am going to bring back what was once a crucial distinction. Namely, the sharp separation between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Theodore Dalrymple’s book shows both why that distinction is necessary, indeed absolutely essential, and why it has fallen from favor among those who decide society’s rules. Moreover, "Life at the Bottom" offers a wide range of food for related thoughts, so many that I am afraid, beginning this review,

He lost me at the point where he sneers at the Guardian's characterization of Puff Daddy as one of America's greatest minds...Just as there is said to be no correct grammar or spelling, so there is no higher or lower culture: difference itself is the only recognized distinction. This is a view peddled by intellectuals eager to demonstrate to one another their broad-mindedly democratic sentiment. For example, the newspaper that is virtually the house journal of Britain's liberal intelligentsia, t...

I had hopes for this book. I regrettably however, only looked at the title before reading, thinking it would be a detailed testimony on what life is like in the slums. Instead, I was given to empty, and often times pretentious, rhetoric by a British gentleman who appears to be bitter over the apparent end of the British aristocracy. He woes over the foolish underclass—who, according to him, chose their condition completely out of their own volition— and their partying, their self-delusion, thei

When fishing for book recommendations some time ago I've stumbled upon Life at Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple. Now, having read it I wish I had bought and read it immediately instead of postponing it for almost a year.The book is a collection of essays dealing with the British underclass. The main theme or theory of the book is that the underclass is the underclass not because of economic factors, oppression or lack of opportunities but mostly because of it...

Excellent book. Dalrymple (a pseudonym) is a British doctor (prison doctor and a psychiatrist in slum hospitals) who has worked in various slum, inner-city, and third-world conditions for decades. And he's a good writer. A great essayist. This book is made up of twenty-two essays describing the patterns of thought and worldview(s) of those in the "under class"--a class neither poor nor politically oppressed; yet, they live a "wretched existence nonetheless."Dalrymple obviously has a knack for th...

The UK is perhaps only a few years ahead of the US in seeing the consequences of the liberal ideology of redistribution, making criminals into victims, tying the hands of the police with political correctness, and condemning any sort of structured education or empirical testing. This book is along the lines of Thomas Sowell's works: a deep examination of socialist policies gone awry and their effects in creating, excusing, and funding an underclass at the cost of civilized society.

Fantastic.

Reading Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom was like going to McDonalds with Margaret Thatcher and having her constantly whispering in your ear while pointing rudely at strangers, 'Oh, aren't they awful, look at their table manners, oh how ghastly!' Now, while Margaret might be right, there might be a bit of lettuce saturated with orange sauce hanging out of a spotty teenager's oily mouth, and you might indeed be repulsed by it, but after her diatribe you will be determined that you see the dining et...

The whole book is driving the point home of personal responsibility. Much like I WILL NOT take responsibility for my abuse of alcohol and my unwillingness to change my situation out of mind blowing laziness and apathy, Dalrymple argues a lot of this is my own choice?!?! What an asshole!!! He is harshing my buzz... He states that a lot of this originates from academia and most from Liberal thought and blaming "the system" rather than "the self". As if!!! The idea that instead of a murderer murder...

Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) is a retired doctor and psychiatrist. In this book of essays he presents to us the view into the English underclass. I must say that I was terrified at what I read. I guess I have never imagined the extent to which England has sunk. Dalrymple covers everything from domestic abuse, addiction, poverty, education and many more topics. He gets deep into the causes of the development of the underclass. His essay on what is poverty is brilliant. This book will open...

This was a very disturbing book, one of the most honest looks at England's underclass. Dr. Theodore Dalrymple has a very real-life look into the world he describes so eloquently in his life as a doctor in a slum district. The similarities with American life are startling. I was also surprised that his stories of addicts and people caught in the system resemble people I have dealt with in my supposedly "insulated" suburban private school. The decline of society cannot be denied but just like the

Please pass the Prozac.If only Dalrymple had thrown in a plucky and perfectly innocent orphan who triumphs over his circumstances, he'd have out-Dickensianed Dickens with this collection of essays originally published twenty to twenty-five years ago. One shudders to think how much worse the circumstances must have gotten since then. Saddest, the book is all diagnosis and no cure. The author, an avowed atheist of the benign sort who does not make zealous antireligionism a pillar of his own faith,...

Who knew that the police in Nigeria rent out their standard issue weapons to criminals, to pursue illegal activities in the night? Ha! That and many more unknown facets of reality in this gem of a book.I have read by now, a bunch of books by the good Dr. Dalrymple. His criticism of the current sociocultural milieu of Britain is beautifully composed, to say the least. I admire his willingness to go against the grain, which years of experience - as a psychiatric doctor in an English slum - must ha...

Anecdotal but witty interpretation of several social issues regarding the underclass of UK (and maybe the West?) from a conservative viewpoint.

Thoroughly depressing read. 4.5/5, rounded down (conservatively).

A collection of Dalrymple's essay about the underclass in Britain—though I daresay America is not far from seeing the same situation becoming widespread as well. His diagnosis is grim, his prescription surely one that will not be undertaken, for isn't it cruel and judgmental to suggest that children (and parents and teachers) take education seriously, that women are not chattel (in England, mind you—England! The nation that once responded furiously to women throwing themselves upon their husband...

Life at the Bottom is a point of view from a hospital psychiatrist in the slums of England. He writes of his observations, then his professional opinion on the matter. The book is divided into two parts. The first seems to be based heavily on observation which is then backed by opinion. The second seems to be written in reverse, more heavily based on opinion backed with observation.The doctor takes a conservative stand point, and can sometimes seem cynical in some of his written thoughts. This m...

I have the feeling mister Dalrymple is just a pityfull person, frustrated from his work and now want's to take "revenge" in blaming the 'underclass' from everything that's wrong. It's not even historical correct, he stigmatises persons having tattoos as criminals (yes, I have tattoos, just like a lot of ordinary people because it's a way of art) and uses this as an example for his theory that the underclass influences the upperclass. If he had done some investigation he should have learned that

What make this bleak, sobering book readable are due to: 1) it's the refined prose; 2) English dry sense of humor; and 3) utter sincerity of the author on the subject matter.I always harbor certain prejudice towards medical professionals as unfeeling lot who only relate to us, patients merely by our ailments/illness and subsequent case-study for the interns. That's why I almost persuaded that it's not the case, alas this doctor is an exception to the rule.I'm curious to know what's go through th...

An incomparable essayist with insight and unique experienceDalrymple writes fantastic prose and offers insight into modern life through the lens of a doctor serving the British "underclass." Bracing.