More Jane

The latest issue of the National Review (June 6, 2005) includes a profile of British member of Parliament, Michael Gove. Mr. Gove is a writer by profession and a conservative by inclination. The article, in part, describes his journey from being a self preceived socialist to being a member of the Conservative Party.

But what is of interest to your faithful correspondent is the following:

"Gove also notes that he admired certain writers, well before realizing that he was responding to a sort of conservativism. He liked Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene ...and Jane Austen. 'People caricature it, but Austen's work was important to me, in that it recognizes the value of respecting ancestral wisdom. The fact that I responded to Austen predisposed me 20 years later to respond to Gertrude Himmelfarb,' the American historian and author of such books as The De-moralizatuion of Society."