Henry Fairlie

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Henry Fairlie (1924 - 1990) was a British journalist for The Spectator, which he joined in 1955. Before that he had been a feature writer for The Observer 1948-50, and a political editorial writer for The Times 1950-54. He was also a regular contributor to The New Republic from the mid-1970s until his death in 1990. ^[1] He relocated to the United States in 1965 to avoid a British libel suit, for having called his onetime lover Antonia Fraser a whore on television.^[2]

He coined the term The Establishment in his column in The Spectator on 23 September, 1955. Fairlie wrote:

By the "Establishment", I do not only mean the centres of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.^[3]

[edit] Books

• The Life of Politics, Methuen, 1969.

• The Kennedy Promise, Doubleday, 1973.

• The Spoiled Child of the Western World: The Miscarriage of the American Idea in Our Time, Doubleday, 1976.

• The Parties: Republicans and Democrats in This Century, St. Martin's, 1978.

• The Seven Deadly Sins Today, New Republic Books, 1978.

• A Journey into America, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1985.

• (With Mary Gordon and Alexander Theroux) The Revenge of Failure: The Culture of Envy and Rage, foreword by Os Guinness, Trinity Forum (Burke, VA), 1994.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
2. ^ Terzian, P. "Fairlie Tales", The American Spectator, May90, Vol. 23 Issue 5, p29, 2p, 1 illustration
3. ^ M. J. Cohen and John Major (eds.), Cassell's History in Quotations (Cassell, 2004), p. 918.