The Salisbury Review, now twenty years old, seeks to convey the ideas and concerns of genuine conservatism and carries articles on all aspects of public life, social policy and the arts. (See Statement). Edited to a high standard with serious book reviews, it also includes discussions of issues from around the world and various articles on subjects which are not generally aired in the mainstream press. The magazine began in 1982, the year of the Falklands War and the post-Afghanistan 'peace offensive' launched by the Soviet Union. It was an initiative taken by the Salisbury Group, a small group of old-fashioned Tories informally chaired by the Marquess of Salisbury, which had been set up in 1976, dedicated to the political vision of the Third Marquess, who had famously declared that good government consisted in doing as little as possible. They had held informal meetings and published pamphlets but needed a regular publication to articulate a tradition of social thinking which was much older than the Thatcher revival of the seventies, which they thought overemphasized the importance of economic policy.

Roger Scruton, who was Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, was the chief Editor for the first eighteen years. He is now well known as a writer on many subjects: music, hunting, architecture, as well as trenchant commentaries on political affairs. During the eighties the Review became known in underground circles in Eastern Europe, a samizdat edition having appeared in Prague in 1986. A regular column 'In Search of Central Europe' gave dissidents behind the wire the opportunity to express their ideas and comments on events. These were published anonymously although well known dissidents like Vaclav Havel and Jan Carnogursky could risk being published under their own names. (v. My Life as a Pariah, The Spectator, September 21^st 2002 and In Search of Central Europe, SR September 2002). Perhaps one of our greatest triumphs was the central item in the Prague Police Museum - the exhibit of an unofficial western spy - a maquette of a youngish man in Western clothes, with spy camera and binoculars. Copies of the Salisbury Review fell from his open briefcase along with copies of Plato and Aristotle. In Britain the Salisbury Review might just as well have been a samizdat publication because of the fury directed against its contributors. One of these was Ray Honeyford, the Bradford headmaster who spoke the truth about the folly of multiculturalism in our schools (SR, Winter, 1984). Attempts to defend him led to libels and the persecution of other contributors. Speaking at universities during those extraordinary years could involve you in vicious physical attacks. Roger Scruton remarked that the communist secret police treated you rather better than the Socialist Workers Party. As well as being intelligently anti-communist, the Review carried articles denouncing foreign aid and drew attention to the plight of Christians in Arab countries and democrats in Africa. It denounced feminism, modernism and deconstruction and drew attention to other social issues like juvenile delinquency and abortion.

Nowadays the challenges presented by the political spectrum are no less exacting. The geographical and political certainties of the Cold War have given way to a confused and unpredictable ethos aggravated by a glaring lack of leadership. At home we face an apparently invincible Blair government chipping away at our national institutions, aided by a rampant political correctness and unchecked by an impotent opposition. The Conservative Party has lost its sense of direction because it has not formulated its ideas, therefore rendering its policies incoherent and erratic. Above all, it has not stressed the importance of the nation in a time when the nation state is being undermined, most significantly by the European union.(v. The European Union is the new Soviet Union by Vladimir Bukovsky, SR, Winter 2002). Globalization, the problems of migration and the conflicts of the Middle East are among many subjects we shall be tackling in future issues. Whatever happens in the future, the editors intend to continue to provide a platform and a forum for conservatives with something to say and a stimulating read for those whose intellectual needs are not satisfied by the increasing trivia and shallow content of the mainstream press.

Past and Present contributors include John Casey, Vaclav Havel, Alun Chalfont, Antony Flew, Roy Kerridge, Enoch Powell C H Sisson, Jonas Savimbi, Oscar Kambona, Nikolai Tolstoy, Conrad Black, Brian Crozier, Ralph Harris, Caroline Cox, John Marks, Quinlan Terry, Theodore Dalrymple, P.D James, Michael Wharton, Daniel Hannan, John O'Sullivan, David Pryce Jones, Margaret Thatcher, William Hague, Otto von Habsburg, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Norman Stone, John Taverner, Hugh Trevor Roper, Frederick Forsyth, Alfred Sherman, Andrew Roberts, Ann Widdecombe.

Submissions: Articles may be unsolicited but book reviews should be cleared with the Managing Editor. Articles are normally between 2000 and 4000 words. Reviews are normally between 1000-2000. Typescripts should be sent electronically, where possible, E Mail or disc and double spaced. The editors reserve the right to subedit texts although this can be done with the cooperation of the writer. Enquiries about submissions should be addressed to the Managing Editor.

Letters: Letters for the magazine must refer to an article or review in a recent issue and must be as short as possible. Since letters in a quarterly magazine soon go out of date we are hoping to start a letters page/discussion group on the web.