Interview with Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray is a writer.
On Writing
Contents
Max Raskin: How do you primarily think of yourself? You write, you give lectures, you’re a reporter.
Douglas Murray: Always as a writer, because it's what I've been all my adult life.
MR: I want to ask a little bit about your writing habits. How do you sit down to write something — do you take notes in notebooks? On your phone?
DM: It varies, and it’s different from columns to books. With a book like this one, I work out of notebooks and use recording devices to collect evidence and testimony. I then write that up and start to work that into the themes and the narrative of the book. I’m also furiously making notes all along the way.
And then something happens in the book writing process: Things settle to the bottom. Certain stories or events will stand out, certain testimonies become emblematic of a wider story.
MR: So you handwrite things that stand out?
DM: Yes, and particular phrases or observations and things like that.
MR: What about in books that you read? Do you write marginalia?
DM: Always. I've never read a book without a pencil behind my ear. Sadly, even a novel, I have a sort of feeling that there might be something in it that's going to be useful.
MR: And do you use pencil or pen?
DM: Pencil. You never deface a book with a pen.
MR: Are you particular about the kind of pencil you use?
DM: No, no. Nothing like that. I just use anything to hand. Occasionally, I have nice notebooks that someone's given me or something and that elevates it, but I can jot on anything.
MR: Are you fastidious about anything with respect to writing — like you have to be in a certain environment to write?
DM: I used to think that when writing a book, I had to be in total seclusion in what I used to call “book purdah.” And now I realize I don't.
I have done that, but it just doesn't work anymore, and so I've had to learn how to write on the road and write anywhere I am.
MR: Was Hitchens your beau idéal? When you think about writers and their general way of operating, is there someone who is your model?
DM: Oh, gosh, so many people. I sort of learned it as I went along, and I suppose you pick up things from people. Christopher was wonderful, but I do not follow his writing methods, not least because he could write after quite a lot of drinks and I can't.
Mentors
MR: There’s this thing about British writers and drinking, I'm not quite sure what it is, but what is your relationship with drinking?
DM: I will never write or speak with a drink in me.
MR: You will never write after drinking?
DM: No, never. Never.
And never take to a stage with a drink inside you, either.
MR: Really?
DM: Absolutely.
MR: When did that rule emerge?
DM: I realized I wouldn't be at the top of my game.
MR: Was Roger Scruton like that?
DM: Well, Roger was a very different type. He obviously was extremely fastidious. He worked very hard throughout the day, and then would stop in the evening.
I remember once — and it's one of the reasons I noticed similarities between us — I remember him at the lunch table at his house, and we got to the end of lunch…I was staying with him…and his wife sort of said to Roger, "You want to get back to the desk, don't you?" He said, "Yes." I could feel this irritable, electric energy starting up, and he was conscious that the afternoon mustn't be wasted, you know?
MR: Would you say he was a mentor of yours?
DM: Yes, very much so.
MR: What was he like?
DM: He was omnivorously intelligent, and fastidious, and discerning. And as a mentor, incredibly encouraging, nurturing. He had a very deft way of guiding you towards something that he thought you might find interesting. Whether it was a book or an idea, he would very carefully plant a seed. There were a few people who I used to go to before writing a book to discuss the ideas I was thinking of going over, and he was one of them. Jonathan Sacks was another. I used to go to see Jonathan when I wanted to discuss the deep ideas of a book.
MR: Do you remember your last conversation with Roger?
DM: Yes, I do.
MR: Would you share any of that?
DM: I can't, it's private. I did the last public conversation with him, when I'd helped to turn around the anti-Scruton tide that was washing through the UK.
MR: I called it the Scrutony.
DM: Yes, yes, well said.
I am extremely proud of having done that and shown him how much he meant to me. We spoke on stage for what would turn out to be the last time. It was a very, very memorable and warm event, in which Roger said some incredibly profound things, which I'm very grateful he gave us.
Passions, Not Hobbies
MR: Do you have any mentees?
DM: Ah, it’s not for me to say. I try to encourage younger writers wherever I can. Whenever I speak at a university, I'm always delighted to meet the gaggle of clever, inquisitive, interesting people who will emerge. And they do, because of course, while some people think that finding figures like I've found in my life is some kind of matter of luck, it's not quite. It's luck plus orienting yourself to people that you admire, and anyone can do that. I did it rather unselfconsciously. But looking back, I clearly wanted to be in the vicinity of people who I admired. And I suppose, in particular, I admired and still do admire writers who I think are courageous in what they do.
MR: People have said you used to be shy. Do you consider yourself shy now?
DM: I don't think so. No, not at all.
MR: But did you used to be shy?
DM: Probably as a child at times, but not as an adult. I don't think anyone's ever accused me of shyness as an adult.
MR: That’s interesting because I've talked to three or four people who said you were quite shy maybe 15 years ago.
DM: Writers have this strange thing, because we both need solitude and need a public. I remember one of my first literary agents saying, "It's no wonder all you writers are mad. I mean, we lock you away for two years to write a book, throw you in front of the world's cameras for a few days, and then throw you back in a locked room again." And I remember thinking that was very funny. But of course, that isn't the case now, because nowadays, everyone's everywhere all the time.
MR: What about hobbies — I hear you like hunting.
DM: Well, careful. I don't regard myself as having hobbies, I don't think adults should have hobbies.
MR: Really?
DM: Yes.
MR: But what do you do to decompress?
DM: I read and I see friends. I think adults should have interests — children have hobbies.
MR: What do you think about golf and things like this?
DM: I have an almost spiritual aversion to it.
MR: What about hunting?
DM: I don't foxhunt, I do shoot.
MR: Do you bird hunt?
DM: Yes — bird shooting, game shooting.
MR: And do you enjoy that?
DM: Oh, it's magnificent. Yes.
MR: You don’t call that a hobby?
DM: No, it's passion.
Writers and Friends
MR: You are in the U.S. now — is there anything you miss from England?
DM: I sometimes miss the English countryside, which I love very much.
MR: For someone who's never been to the English countryside, where would you recommend going?
DM: Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Devon, Dorset. It's incredibly beautiful for me — very soothing countryside. And yes, that's something I miss. Cities these days are all magnificent, but they're the same people everywhere in the world in the cities. Certainly New York and London, for instance. This is a great thing in many ways. But I miss the English countryside, and I have many friends there who I miss, but I manage to keep in touch with them.
MR: Where's your favorite pub in England?
DM: Well, I don't really get to do that very much anymore. I used to when I was young. I used to enjoy the pubs of Oxford when I was a student, but I'd feel rather sad going back now.
MR: So as you know, I consider you my good luck charm because I was sitting next to you the night I met my wife. Is it dinner parties for you all the way down?
DM: I suppose so. I like tables in friends' houses with good conversation, good argument, good wine. Actually, it doesn't have to be good wine. It just has to be a lot of it.
MR: Your drink of choice, what is it?
DM: Oh, it depends. Vodka martini, very dry.
MR: What about any woo-woo? Do you do any yoga?
DM: No, nothing. I don't believe in yoga. I think it's irritating.
MR: And what about religion? Do you have a religious belief?
DM: Yes, but I keep it private, because I regard it as a work in progress.
MR: Is this something you think about a lot?
DM: Of course, for what thinking adult wouldn't think about the ultimate subjects.
MR: I want to ask about your favorite writers today. Who's a person that you make sure you always read their latest?
DM: That’s very interesting. There are certain novelists that I will always read the latest novel. For instance, I always read Michel Houellebecq's latest. There's sometimes rather surprising figures. For instance, there’s a French writer who's a horribly left-wing socialist and not really grown up politically, but a fascinating writer called Édouard Louis, and I always read his books when they come out. I always read Alan Hollinghurst whenever he produces a novel. Yes, there are certain people, I always read their work when it comes out.
MR: Are your friends mostly normal or in this world of intellectualism?
DM: Oh, I have a bewildering array of friends. I was recently speaking to a friend in New York. I mentioned somebody who I knew, and he said, "Gosh, you keep the widest circle of acquaintance of anyone I know." I was very proud of that.
MR: Was that always the case?
DM: Yes, I think so. If you're interested in things, you're interested in people, and you want to surround yourself with interesting people who are stimulating, as well as fun and loving.
MR: Do you have a best friend?
DM: Oh, yeah.
MR: Can you say who your best friends are?
DM: No, I don't like treading on my own private life, and I don't like to compromise people. But I have some people who are very old friends who I've known for decades, since school even. I love accumulating friends along the way, making new ones. I think it's always a bad sign when somebody doesn't do that. Sort of suggests that you've run out of curiosity about the world.
Douglas MurrAI
MR: You must be constantly traveling — how do you survive it?
DM: You get used to it. Around the time I was writing The Strange Death of Europe, I was in a different European country every week for some years.
I have certain rules, for instance, I always accept an invitation to speak or go somewhere I've never been. It doesn't matter if that's an American city I've never been, or a country far abroad I've never been. I always accept that.
MR: Wow.
DM: It’s the most interesting thing always. It's a wonderful thing when you arrive in a country you've sort of known about but have never visited, because you suddenly get the point of it. I remember when I first arrived in Beijing many years ago, you have this extremely simple thought, "Ah, this is China." It's important to me that I see things and I go to places, but I probably travel more than it's healthy for any human being. The problem is that I dream of sitting beside the fire reading books, but at the same time, if I only did that, I'd be frustrated with myself.
MR: Do you use ChatGPT at all?
DM: I occasionally try it out for things — I mention in On Democracies and Death Cults, I put Elise Stefanik’s questions to the heads of MIT, UPenn, and Harvard into ChatGPT to see how it would answer the questions. And as I say in the book, I discovered rather movingly that ChatGPT was far more moral than the president of Harvard. ChatGPT, for instance, was able to condemn genocide.
MR: Do you have a thought on what writing looks like in a couple years from now?
DM: It's obviously going to revolutionize things. I was rather alarmed recently when speaking to a novelist friend in Texas when he told me that he was using ChatGPT — not to write the books — but if he came to a kind of halt at the end of the day and couldn't quite see where he'd pick things up the next day, he would put what he had into ChatGPT, just to see what it suggested. He said he didn't ever really take its suggestions, but the ideas it threw up were generative, as to where he did and didn't want to go the next day when he got back to his desk. I'm a little too scared of it.
MR: Yeah, how does it make you feel?
DM: I was at a seminar about a year ago with people on the forefront of the AI, explaining everything they were doing. Through all of this, I was very struck that us humanities types had a visceral, visceral reaction. I didn't, but the others almost all did. Musicians, writers, and others, they all had this visceral response, which I found in itself very telling, which is, "It'll never be able to do what we can do. It'll never write a poem as great as a human." And all of the tech people said, "You just wait till next year."
Like all developments in technology, you can't resist them, but you should regard them as a challenge. One of the things I've tried to do in this book is to go to levels where I know that the AI couldn't go. That includes firsthand witness testimony and on-the-ground work for a good year and a half. Also, thoughts about things that I've collected over my years of reading and thinking, which I know that it wouldn't throw up.
I'm fortunate enough to have a wonderful readership, including a young demographic readership, and one of my favorite things I love doing is throwing in ideas and people that I know that they might not otherwise come across, writers that I think deserve to be brought out to the fore more. I think one of the things I try to do is to cite people who, to quote Stephen Spender, “remembered the soul’s history” and have that in them. Otherwise, the presentism of everything would be overwhelming. Presentism is shallow if only left on its own.
From Rogan to Scruton
MR: Do you feel like you’re a part of a moment right now with the writers and commentators around you?
DM: I've no idea. When people group writers together, historically, it tends to irritate the people in question because they get annoyed that they've been grouped in, and then they get competitive and rivalrous. Quite often literary and writing movements are slightly forced on people.
I suppose I feel two things as a writer. One is yes, that I have peers, including, I'm very fortunate to say, many friends whose work I admire, and whose writing and thought I admire, and I love surrounding myself with them and learning from them.
MR: But will it be like the Cambridge Apostles or something like this?
DM: Slightly less gay.
MR: I thought you were going to say slightly more gay.
DM: Couldn't be more gay than the Cambridge Apostles.
Two, I wrote recently in a piece in The Spectator that people miss out when they're not friends with people from many different generations in their time, particularly older generations.
MR: It’s interesting because you’ll have these long conversations with everyone from Joe Rogan to Roger Scruton.
DM: It’s always to get out ideas and throw around ideas. There are wonderful platforms now that are amazing to get ideas, and facts, and thoughts out into.
But at the same time, and I don't know if this is your experience or the experience of every writer, but at the same time, it is a kind of loneliness, which is probably right, probably how it should be. I don't seek to be approved of by everyone or anything like that. And so there's inevitably a sort of feeling of solitude about it, but it's quite a nice feeling, actually. And it's probably what you have to be as a writer, both gregarious and somebody who can cope with and indeed embrace solitude. And that includes not just solitude at your desk, but the knowledge that sometimes you will be the only person walking into a headwind alone, and so what?
Flossing Whilst British
MR: Do you floss?
DM: I'm British, of course I don't.
MR: Do you have a gym routine?
DM: Yes. Actually, working out is about the only way I have, other than playing the piano for myself, in which I can turn off my mind. If you push weights, you really aren't thinking about anything else. And that for me is very important, because otherwise, I’m endlessly thinking.
Top of the Pops
MR: When you sit down to play do you play composed works or improvise?
DM: I play my favorite composers. My main go-tos are Mozart, Bach, always Bach, Chopin, Ravel. And I think the American Songbook is perhaps America's greatest cultural gift to the world to date.
MR: I've actually said that a number of times in my interviews.
DM: I think that Rodgers and Hart, Gershwin — these are masters on the same level as Schumann, who's also one of my gods.
MR: If you wanted to impress someone, what’s your go-to piece?
DM: I don't think I ever do it to impress anyone, only myself. But Grieg's Lyric Pieces, Bach's preludes and fugues, and some of the Bach concertos. And some set pieces. But I love just playing through and sometimes singing along to Irving Berlin or Cole Porter.
MR: How often do you play?
DM: Every day.
MR: What kind of music do you listen to?
DM: I'm afraid almost only classical, but I love exploring works that I haven't yet got around to, because there's so much to know. My current passions are the Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra and Richard Strauss's last opera, Capriccio, which I put off for a while, and now I've really been listening to and studying. I think it's a masterpiece. And what a wonderful thing to discover, an opera of Strauss you didn't really know.
MR: What was the last piece of music you listened through, start to finish?
DM: This morning I woke up and decided that I should try the Diabelli Variations of Beethoven again. And I'm afraid that I found it as difficult as I have before, but I know that's my fault, not Beethoven's.
MR: Are you a morning person?
DM: No, like all writers, I'm a late morning person if I can be. But alas, my life these days means I have to get up earlier than I always wish.
MR: Do you eat or snack during the day?
DM: I don't think adults should snack.
MR: Do you take naps?
DM: No, no. Can't do that. Maybe in 40 years' time I'll treat myself to the odd afternoon nap, but for now, there's too much to do.
Be Kind
MR: Everyone I know who works with you says you treat them well. I guess I'm a little surprised by that — not because of you — but because I just have this thought about British writers. Why do you think you’re not like that?
DM: Well, some people may disagree with you on that.
But the people I'm around…I cherish them, I treasure them.
MR: Were you always like that?
DM: As Lord Clark of Civilisation said at the end of his great series when he gave his personal view for five minutes — he said if he could sum up civilization in a word, it would be “courtesy.” Although I can be pretty rebarbative in public, because I need to be against some of the people I am put up against, in my personal life, I like to think that I'm a rather pleasant, happy-go-lucky kind of fellow.
And being as for being nice to people — Do you know Philip Larkin's poem, “The Mower.” It's a terror. It’s such an upsetting poem, where he discovers that the hedgehog he's fed in his garden has got caught up in his mower and has been killed. And Larkin feels a grief that is just terrible.
MR: I know the line well because you said it to me the first night we met!
"We should be kind…"
DM: "... while there is still time."
I try to live by that — it's short, it's awfully short, time.
Well, thank you, Max, for sparing the time. Let me get on my glorious JetBlue flight.