John Casey (academic)

John Casey is a British academic and a writer for The Daily Telegraph. He was educated at the Irish Christian Brothers' school, St Brendan's College, Bristol. He has been described as "mentor" to another grammar school product Roger Scruton and is a former lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge and a former lecturer and a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In 1975, along with Scruton, he founded the Conservative Philosophy Group. He was editor of The Cambridge Review between 1975 and 1979.

Journalism

Casey has been a regular contributor to The Spectator, the Sunday and Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard. His special interest is foreign commentary, writing from Japan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Burma. His articles have included interviews with liberation theologians in Latin America, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Grand Ayatollahs in Iran. He has often written explanatory articles sympathetic to Islam.

The rescue of Pascal Khoo Thwe

In February 1988 Casey met a student in Mandalay, Burma, because he had been told he loved James Joyce. Shortly after the student, Pascal Khoo-Thwe (a member of as remote hill tribe), was forced to flee into the jungle along with thousands of others involved in a failed uprising. He sought help from Casey who traveled to the Thai border with a bodyguard and managed to get Khoo-Thwe to England. Khoo-Thwe went on to gain a place at Cambridge University and later wrote an account of the story in his book From The Land of Green Ghosts. The book won the Kiriyama prize for non-fiction (2002) and the French translation won a prize for the best foreign non-fiction book published in France in 2009.

Salisbury Review controversy

An article by Casey in the Salisbury Review led to the accusation that he favored the repatriation of immigrants of West Indian origin, an interpretation he denied. More recently his views have shifted steadily to the Left.

Books

• “The Language of Criticism”, London: Methuen,1966.
• “Morality and Moral reasoning”, London: Methuen,1971.
• “Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics”, Clarendon paperbacks, 1991.
• “After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory”, Oxford University Press, 2010.
• “The Language of Criticism”, Routledge Revivals, 2011.

Articles

• “Hegel's Aesthetics”, TLS, Jan 1976.
• “Oxford Marxists and Cambridge Critics (on Terry Eagleton)”, TLS, May 1977.
• 'Tradition and Authority' in Maurice Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays (Cassell, 1978), pp. 82–100.
• 'One Nation: The Politics of Race' in The Salisbury Review, Vol. 1 No. 1, October 1982, pp. 23–28.
• 'How Can We Have a Duty to the Dead?' in The Salisbury Review, Vol. 1 No. 3, April 1983, pp. 4–6.
• “What is wrong with the Times?”, The Spectator, March 1987.
• “A Burmese evening”, The Spectator, Sept 1988.
• “Gazza and other gods”, Evening Standard, August 1990.
• “Among the Believers (Nicaragua)”, Sunday Telegraph, April 1991.
• “Sanctimonious: It is - are you?”, The Independent, Nov 1991.
• “Enemies on the lake (Burma)” Independent Magazine, 1991.
• “Michael Oakeshott”, TLS, March 1991.
• “Look no further than the mouth”, The Spectator, Nov 1993.
• “Cuba - yes but”, Sunday Telegraph, 1993.
• “Why fear Islam?”, Daily Telegraph, July 1994.
• “The roots of Classics”, Sunday Times Culture, March 1994.
• “Warriors without remorse (Japan)”, Telegraph, 1995.
• “Legalise hard drugs”, Daily Mail, May 1995.
• “Canon to right of them”, TLS, Nov 1995.
• “Art in an age of fundamentalism”, TLS, June 1996.
• “John Casey enjoys a chat with Hezbollah”, The Spectator, May 1997.
• “Egypt after the Hatshepsut massacre”, Daily Telegraph, Jan 1998.
• “Memories of a Catholic boyhood”, Daily Telegraph, April 1998.
• “Cuba's real religion”, The Spectator, Jan 1998.
• “Gays in Havana August”, The Spectator, 1998.
• “The far pavilions (meeting with Taliban)”, The Spectator, April 2000.