The New Puritans
2nd April 2023
As opening sentences go, ‘You fucking Nazi c*nt,’ takes some beating. This was the charge made against Andrew Doyle not by some faceless internet troll but by an old friend to whose son he is the godfather. A left-wing homosexual with a doctorate in early Renaissance poetry, Doyle makes an unlikely flagbearer for fascism. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone to whom the accusation would be more comically absurd. So, what caused his friend to make it? What deranging force separated an otherwise sane man from his senses?
That is what The New Puritans seeks to answer. In it, Doyle succeeds in doing what few writers have managed: he gives form to that nebulous movement known as woke.