James Delingpole
Politics • Culture • Writing
Erudite but accessible; warm and witty; definitely not woke
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Venice - Lots of Nice Canals, Churches, Paintings, Views, Trattorias and Stuff; but You Need One More Key Ingredient to Make It Magical

I’ve just been to Venice but I’m not going to bore you with the details*. Instead, I want to use the occasion to observe something which may seem stunningly obvious but which nonetheless I don’t think any of us talk about nearly often enough, despite it being one of the most important truths of our existence.

The thought occurred to me on the water taxi back to the airport (yes, they’re stupidly expensive; no, they’re not a waste of money) and I was trying to rank my top experiences in my head. Many of the usual candidates came up - the golden mosaics in St Mark’s basilica, and so on - but it struck me that most of the really special moments weren’t so much about the objects themselves but about the human interaction that went with them.

For example, though the Fawn and I loved the morning we spent checking out the Carpaccio scuola and a couple of old churches in the Castello district, what really made it for us was the company of a random, delightful stranger we’d met that morning on the Vaporetto.

He was an artist from Berlin. We talked about everything from Anselm Kiefer to the genius of Werner Herzog (not rated in Germany, apparently), about our likes and dislikes of Renaissance art (we agreed that the earlier, more decorative stuff is nicer - Bellini over Tintoretto), about how amazingly fortunate we were to have visited the San Giorgio dei Greici in the middle of a service, which meant all that incense and chanting and mystery that the Orthodox Church does so well. His father had fought with the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Kharkiv and was full of shrapnel from the wounds which had sent him home and probably saved his life. We stopped for espresso. We looked at more art. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been fun doing these things with just the Fawn. But somehow, having an extra person to bounce ideas off and share the experience with made everything so much better.

Another day we went to get neckache craning up to look at the trippy ceiling painting in San Pantalon by an artist you’ve never heard of called Gian Fumiani. It’s one of the must-see sights, of that there’s no doubt. But I wonder whether the experience would have been half so pleasurable if it hadn’t been for the lovely, thoughtful old caretaker so evidently proud of the church and so delighted that anyone should come to visit it. Without his solicitousness and enthusiasm we might have missed the small side chapel housing a generously gold-embossed Vivarini and a late medieval alabaster statue of the Virgin. ‘The sign says it is French, but in fact some believe it may be from your country because of the style of the face, which looks like a doll’s,’ he explained to me, after discovering I was English.

Then the Vivaldi concert, of which there are many all over town. Obviously the music was very easy on the ear, as Vivaldi always is. But I doubt the evening would have been half so enjoyable without the English couple next to us sharing a bit of pre-match and interval chat. The woman was a cellist, so could give us insights on the quality of the playing and the acoustics (a bit muddy, she reckoned, though I can’t say it was a problem). Better still, she started a game in which we identified which role each of the eight players - all with very strong Quattrocento features - would have played in a Renaissance painting. The harpsichordist was quite obviously a Doge; the second violin was a soldier; the cellist, with his balding pate spotted with a small tuft of hair was obviously a monk, and so on. It gave you something to look at when you got bored of the Carpaccio altarpiece.

And our favourite trattoria, Ai Cugnai, so good that we went three times so that we could try all the key dishes on the menu. But it wasn’t just the precision of the cooking that brought us back. It was the atmosphere and the way we were treated by the staff, neither haughty nor ingratiating nor indifferent - as can be too often the case - but rather like old friends conspiring with you to ensure that everything about your lunch/dinner from the food on your plate to the speed with which it arrives is exactly as you would wish. I like my food. But the older I get the more I’m convinced that a restaurant’s ambiance is as at least as important as the quality of the cooking.

For ambiance, read company. What you’re really after in a restaurant is a place that’s full. Partly this is because we like to feel we’re somewhere popular rather than unpopular (thus vindicating our choice) and partly because we like to people-watch. But I think mainly it’s because we’re naturally sociable beings who like being among other people. We feed off their enjoyment vibes, which amplify our own. We talk about a restaurant’s ‘buzz’ but I don’t think it’s the noisiness we covet, so much as the feeling of being not a solitary bee but of being in a hive.

I noticed this one afternoon, searching for somewhere to have coffee in the Campo Santa Margherita. There was one cafe that stood out for no other reason than that every table bar one was occupied. I’m sure its coffee and its pricing and its view were no better than anywhere else’s. It’s just that, like all the other customers, we wanted to be close to other people. (Which is quite odd when you think that half the time when you’re in Venice you’re cursing how oppressively crowded the streets are in the heavily touristed bits around the Rialto and San Marco…)

My point, as I said, is not a startlingly original one. But I do think it’s something that we too often take for granted: people need people; we like one another’s company; crowds can be annoying and yet perversely we’re drawn to them.

This is not accidental. I believe that we were designed to be this way. We were meant to commune and bounce ideas off one another and share together the joys of art, of beauty, of creation.

And they know this - the misanthropic, anti-human predator class who wish to weaken us, to undermine us, and ultimately to destroy us. It’s why the lockdowns were such a masterstroke of evil, denying us perhaps the most important thing we need after food, water and shelter - engagement with our fellow man. It’s why the next stage in their infernal plan, after having destroyed most of our small businesses - pubs, especially - is to stop us travelling. It’s why their goal with schools is to have all the teaching done online.

We say we want to get away from it all; we fantasise about living somewhere remote from civilisation. But I don’t think for most of us this is heartfelt - it’s the just the way we’ve been programmed.

Note how people react on Desert Island Discs when Sue Lawley or whoever asks the castaway how they think they’d get on, all alone on their desert island. It’s quite obvious that most of them couldn’t hack it - and understandably so. There’s a reason why just about the worst punishment they can give you in prison is solitary confinement. Human company isn’t luxury. It’s an essential.

*Oh all right. Here are my top tips for Venice.

The island of Torcello. It’s only a 50-minute-ish trek by Vaporetto and you need it to decompress somewhere tranquil and eerie. And also to see the awe-inspiring Byzantine frescoes in the basilica.

San Giorgio dei Greici - Shakespeare (aka Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford) worshipped here when he came to Venice

Ai Cugnai dal 1911 - Perhaps there are other trattorias as good as this but we couldn’t find one. The Seppie in nero con polenta is just about the best thing you will ever eat.

San Pantalon - That painted ceiling is mind-blowing. It took Fumiani 24 years to complete, after which, supposedly, he fell to his death from the scaffolding.

Museo Correr - A great and varied collection. The highlight for me was Fra Mauro’s world map (c.1450).

Water taxi from the airport - it costs Euros 130 (they only take cash) but you arrive in such style it’s worth it.

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James and Dick’s CHRISTMAS Special 2025

Featuring Dick. And James. And Unregistered Chicken. And possibly some other special guests.

Not included in ticket price but available so you don’t starve/die of thirst: nice pizzas out of wood-fired ovens; street food.

VIP Tickets - £120 including bell-ringing lesson, walk with James, front row seats, church tour

Location is: My neck of the woods. Northants. Nearest stations, Banbury/Long Buckby. Junction 11 of M40.

Friday, 28th November 2025. Starts at 5pm

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/?section=events#events

00:02:47
Big Birthday Bash

James Delingpole’s Big Birthday Bash August 1st. Starring Bob Moran, Dick Delingpole and Friends. Tickets £40. VIP Tickets (limited to 20) £120

Venue: tbc Central England/East Midlands - off M40 and M1 in middle of beautiful countryside with lots of b n bs etc.

Buy Tickets / More Info:
https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Live/bob-moran.html

If you have any questions regarding the event - please contact us via our website:
https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/#Contact

00:04:15
Nick Kraljevic

If you had to escape to another country which would it be? James runs through some of the options with Aussie cybersecurity guy and entrepreneur Nick Kraljevic. Nick - a Delingpod addict since Australia’s crazy lockdowns - talks about how to claim dual citizenship (handy if your family originates from somewhere like Croatia, as Nick’s does) and which countries are currently the most welcoming. His two top choices may come as a surprise. Nick is the founder of Societates Civis - www.soc-civ.com - which can help you make the move.

↓ ↓

How environmentalists are killing the planet, destroying the economy and stealing your children's future.

In Watermelons, an updated edition of his ground-breaking 2011 book, JD tells the shocking true story of how a handful of political activists, green campaigners, voodoo scientists and psychopathic billionaires teamed up to invent a fake crisis called ‘global warming’.

This updated edition includes two new chapters which, like a geo-engineered flood, pour ...

01:24:01

Posted by Tom Woods this morning. I concur! Breakfast is for farmers.

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James's Big Birthday Bash - August 1st. Be There!

Because I love you all and want you to be happy, I’d like few things more than if you were ALL able to join me at my James Delingpole Birthday Bash on August 1st.

Unfortunately, numbers are strictly limited. So please don’t be one of those people - I’m the procrastinating type myself, so I know whereof I speak - who sends me a pleading message a few days before the event saying: “Can you squeeze me in?” Because tragically I might not be able to help.

Here’s why I think you’ll enjoy it. The main event is me doing a live Delingpod with Bob Moran and the conversation is going to be great. You know it is. Apart from my brother Dick - who’ll also be appearing, obvs. - there’s probably no one with whom I have a greater rapport than Bob. And, gosh, do we have a lot to talk about: chemtrails, death jabs, dinosaurs, Satanists, the New World Order etc. All the stuff, basically, that you can’t discuss with your Normie friends, but which here we’ll cover freely and frankly because, hey, you’ll be ...

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Christianity 1 New Age 0

If you haven’t already - I’m a bit behind the curve here - I urge you to watch this car crash encounter between Christian apologist and scholar Wes Huff and ‘ancient civilisation’ researcher Billy Carson.

It’s an excruciating experience - probably best to watch it on double speed - for a couple of reasons. First, the hapless podcast host/debate moderator Mark Minard is somewhat out of his depth and is also clearly embarrassed at having one of his guests (Carson, sitting right next to him) eviscerated in front of him by his other guest. This causes him to interrupt the debate at intervals and expound well-meaningly but not very interestingly on his own half-baked views on the mysteries of the universe. You feel a bit sorry for him but you do rather wish he’d shut up.

Second, and mainly, it’s painful to watch Carson being outclassed and outgunned by someone who knows and understands his purported field of expertise so much better than he does. Carson was reportedly so upset by the encounter that he ...

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I Wish I Weren't a Christian

No, not really, obviously. I’m just venting my frustration on how incredibly hard it is sometimes.

For example, if you read your scripture regularly you will notice that time and again Jesus enjoins us to forgive our enemies. This is emphasised in Matthew where He tells us that there’s only one prayer we really need and that’s the Lord’s Prayer.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus leaves us in no doubt that for followers of the way forgiveness is not an optional extra.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.

There’s an implicit contract here. If you want to be worthy of God’s forgiveness then you must do likewise.

I say the Lord’s Prayer every day, from the moment I wake till the moment I’m about to go to sleep - and lots of times in between.

The first parts are easy. What’s not to like about hallowing the Lord’s name and celebrating his eternal kingdom and being assured of all that daily bread He provides?

But the forgiving trespasses part can be a bit of a stumbling block because it seems so onerous - and unfair.

Surely if someone wrongs you, especially when unprovoked, the proper and proportionate response ought to be to smite them sevenfold? At the very least.

How can it not be right to retaliate when you’ve got right on your side?

How can it especially not be right when you happen to have been blessed by God with a mind that can produce the kind of next-level invective, weapons-grade cattiness and implacable, Daisy-cutter bomb logic that utterly obliterates anyone foolish enough to cross you?

Not only would the revenge be just - but fun too!

I’ve tried these arguments, over the years, on my morning walk with the dog, which is one of the occasions where I go through the Psalms and commune with God. But I can never quite get my point past the goalkeeper.

I’ll say stuff like: “C’mon, God. Give me a break. I’m not St Francis of Assisi. Can’t you just give me a bit of leeway, just this once, to satisfy my baser urges? I’ll be good afterwards, promise.”

Or: “But taking out wrong ‘uns in an amusing way is my brand. It’s how I make my living. You surely don’t want me to starve, do you?”

Resisting the temptation to deploy my powers is tough. It’s like being blessed with a huge penis only to discover “No sorry. The Lord has decided that your path is to become a monk. So I’m afraid that magnificent appendage is for peeing, only.

Why, God? Why?

The problem is that the Bible doesn’t really offer many get-out clauses. It’s not just the Lord’s Prayer that enjoins forgiveness. There’s that possibly even more annoying bit where Jesus tells us - say what? Really?? - that we should ‘Turn the other cheek.’

And then there are all the Psalms - which Jesus quoted more than almost any other book, so they must be on point - urging us to be patient and to let God take care of all the smiting.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Podcasts/Archive/show.php?slug=2025-08-13-psalm-37-pooyan-mehrshahi

For example, there’s Psalm 37:

Leave off from wrath; and let go displeasure. Fret not thyself else thou shalt be moved to do evil.

Time and again you find the psalmist - usually David - asking, in so many words, “How much longer am I going to put up with this injustice? It’s so unfair!”

And God’s reply is always: “Fret not. I’ve got this!”

In Psalm 73, another of my favourites, the psalmist gets so frustrated he wonders why there’s any point being good when behaving badly seems so much more profitable.

Yea, and I had almost said even as they. [ie the Ungodly] But lo, then I should have condemned the generation of thy children.

But then he goes into the sanctuary of God and learns the fate of the ungodly.

Namely how thou dost set them in the slippery places and castest them down and destroyest them.

O how suddenly do they consume, perish and come to a fearful end.

Yea, even like as a dream when one awaketh, so shalt thou make their image to vanish out of the city.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Podcasts/Archive/show.php?slug=2025-12-09-james-is-joined-by-preacher-stephen-white-to-unpack-the-beauty-and-depth-of-psalm-73

The language and imagery of the Psalms is so magnificent that I could spend all day reciting them. But if you’re reciting them merely for the great poetry then you’re surely guilty of the kind of vainglorious burbling Jesus warned us against in Matthew 6. You need to imbibe the meaning also - and accept that if Jesus took this stuff seriously then you probably should too.

Not, by the way, that I am remotely wasting any time fantasising about my enemies consuming, perishing and coming to a fearful end. On the contrary, I feel sorry for them because choosing the wrong path, away from God, is punishment in itself.

I prefer to take my example from one of the extraordinary monks featured in Archimandrite Tikhon’s Everyday Saints. [Unfortunately I can’t look up his name because I gave my copy to ortho bro Dick].

This monk was sent to the Gulag by the Soviets - but not before being cruelly tortured by a sadistic NKVD man who broke all his fingers. Many years later, the monk was reunited with his torturer, now so thoroughly ashamed he became an ardent Christian.

Please don’t think for a moment that I am comparing my feeble attempts at forbearance to that of this saintly monk. I’m sure I will fail to meet the exacting standards of saintliness on many, many occasions in the future, which will be my loss and your gain. After all, I’m sure my articles are SO much more fun when I’m putting the boot in rather than when I’m turning that other cheek.

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James and Dick's Christmas Special - Don't Miss Out!

I was about to start writing Part Two of my piece Most Journalists Don’t Realise They Are Working For Satan, when a thought occurred: “Hang on, James. Shouldn’t you be plugging your show?”

It’s this Saturday, on the off chance you are interested. I quite understand if you’re not: you’re probably busy, this miserable weather doesn’t make you feel like venturing away from home, and anyway, it’ll just be me and Dick on a stage talking rubbish as usual.

You’re right. Dick and I sitting on a stage talking rubbish is indeed what you’re going to get this Saturday evening. As usual we won’t be at all prepared. Well, Dick might but I won’t because I’m lazyI like to keep it real.

The only thing I will have to do in advance is wrap Dick’s present which I got him from Russia. He’s going to really love it because it is about as Dick a present as you could possibly imagine and I want to watch his little eyes light up as he tears off the wrapping.

But to be fair, I do have roughly in my mind some of the few things I want to talk about. One of them is ‘Who Really Runs The World?’, which obviously for us batshit-crazy tinfoil hat loons is one of those ongoing conversations which keeps changing the more we learn. Another is ‘Was Churchill more evil than Hitler?’ We’ve talked about this stuff before but my take on these issues in 2025 is going to be subtly different from the ones you heard in 2024 or 2023, let alone in say 2019 when I was about 90 per cent Normie. (I’m allowing myself 10 per cent off because I did at least know back then that climate change was bollocks).

Will we play the “Yes/No” game? I doubt it because the answer always “No” these days. But you never know. Perhaps Dick might surprise me. Or perhaps he might introduce a wild card game he has invented for the occasion.

There will be no Christmas decorations. Sorry but it’s too early.

Nor, likely, will I wear my Christmas jumper. Too hot.

But we will do the Lords Prayer at the beginning - inter alia, to ward off any demons and because it makes everyone feel amazingly uplifted - and Jerusalem at the end.

Also, you get to see Unregistered Chickens, who just get better and better. Or so I’m told by one of the band members. Dick and Andy the lead singer keep making bitchy remarks about the fact that even when they’re playing at my events I never come to see them. Or only for a few minutes. I try to explain, honestly, that this isn’t because I’m too grand or because I think they’re crap but because before you do a show the very last thing you want to be doing is hanging out with the audience because it drains all the energy you need for the show.

Still I think the thing you’ll enjoy most about the event is hanging out with like minded folk. You’ll be able to put faces to the names of some of the fellow Awake people you know from online. And you’ll be able to talk about all the things - Michelle Obama’s big swinging lunchpack; hybrid creatures bioengineered in the same Antartica DUMB where they breed the children for adrenochrome, were the Thunderbirds puppets actually devised as a result of remote viewing technology which enabled Gerry Anderson to see into the future from the 1960s and watch Konstantin Kisin and the other one presenting Triggerpod? etc - that you will probably avoid bringing up with family round the Christmas dinner table.

It’ll be fun. You’ll really, really enjoy it.

It will be no skin off my nose if you don’t. But I just think if you don’t come you’ll be missing out.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/Events/james-and-dick-s-christmas-special-2025

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All They Want Is Your Soul

One of my unlikely podcast guests this week is Nick Griffin.

I say ‘unlikely’ because I’m always slightly wary of people who have been involved in mainstream politics - even if, like Griffin, it was only at the margins.

https://locals.com/jamesdelingpole/feed?post=7481845

Griffin - or Nick, as I suppose I should call him, now he’s my new mate - used to be the leader of the notorious British National Party (BNP). Like the party from which it splintered, the National Front, the BNP was and is one of those outfits which the mainstream media likes to brand as ‘fascist’ and ‘far right’ and ‘basically a bunch of Nazis.’

This would be why, in my days as an MSM journalist, Nick never crossed my radar. He wasn’t the sort of character of whom you could say to your editor “How about we hear what that Nick Griffin has to say for himself?” It would be tantamount to career suicide because, imagine, what if you quite liked him or he said something people agreed with? Far better not to take the risk - and to ignore him - as all self-respecting media folk did.

Anyway, now that very belatedly I’ve had chat with him I’ve discovered that, yes, I do quite like him. And also that he says lots of things I agree with. Many of the people who’ve listened to the podcast share my pleasant surprise. Here’s a typical comment:

“I was brought up believing the BBC hype - NickG is equivalent to Satan […] Please do bring Nick back on. Even some of my ‘awake-ish’ friends still recoil in horror at the mention of his name. This exposure can right this wrong.”

My main reservation about inviting Nick onto the Delingpod wasn’t that he’d be too controversial but that he might be a bit too conventional in his outlook, a bit Normie.

But on this, too, I was pleasantly surprised. As an example of how interesting his conversation is - and perhaps as an incentive to encourage those of you who aren’t already paid subscribers to sign up for an early listen before the podcast goes out free - I want to share with you one of his best anecdotes.

It was prompted when I asked him about whether any attempts had ever been made by shadowy forces to buy him off.

Yes, Nick said. Attempts had been made on a couple of occasions, one of them when he was a member of the National Front.

Representatives of an ultra-orthodox Jew in New York called Rabbi Schiller offered the National Front a large sum of money, on one somewhat surprising condition, which I shall reveal in a moment.

In Italy, meanwhile, on another occasion, some of Nick’s ‘far-right’ fellow travellers were made a similarly generous offer by a wealthy Jewish outfit. Again, the money was dependent on the fulfilment of one surprising term.

Then, Griffin went on, there was the example of his friend in Northern Ireland, a social marketing genius who was offered a blank cheque by Jewish interests, but only on one condition.

Here’s the interesting part. Perhaps you thought - as I certainly did - that in all three instances the Jewish donors would have made the same request: talking more about the Holocaust, maybe; toning down the anti-Semitism; avoiding criticism of Israel; something like that.

But no. The things that were requested were all very different - and also quite unexpected.

In the case of the National Front, the request was that they should stop griping about the perils and iniquities of the banking system.

With the Italians, the request was that they cease to sing the praises of Corneliu Codreanu, a Romanian fascist leader - founder of the Iron Guard - assassinated in the 1930s.

And in the case of the Northern Irish marketing guru, it was that he should stop talking about the evils of abortion.

The three very different provisos only had one thing in common: each was very dear to the heart of the people to whom the money offer had been made. To the National Front, banking was the key plank of their economic argument. To the Italians, Codreanu was a beloved romantic hero and role model. To the Northern Irishman, crusading against abortion was a moral imperative.

“They offer you everything you need,” explained Griffin. “But in every case they are only prepared to give it to you on condition that you sacrifice the thing closest to your heart.”

Perhaps experts in the Kabbala, or the Babylonian Mystery Religions, or the occult generally can explain to me what is going on here. But clearly these offers have great ritual significance - and also go some way towards explaining the nature of a world whose temporary god, according to the scriptures, is Satan.

Yes, you will be granted whatever you want. But not until you’ve first sold your soul.

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