Our culture, what's left of it

Title of Theodore Dalrymple's collection of essays, sub-titled "The Mandarins and the Masses", first published in 2005. See author's interview here. Key passage:

My father was a communist though he was also a businessman. Our house was full of communist literature from the 1930s and 40s, and I remember such authors as Plekhanov and Maurice Hindus and Edgar Snow. It was always clear that my father's concern for humanity was not always matched by his concern for men, to put it mildly, for whom (as individuals) he often expressed contempt. He found it difficult to enter an equal relationship with anyone, and preferred to play Stalin to their Molotov. I think the great disjunction between my father's expressed ideas (and ideals) and his everyday conduct affected me, and made me suspicious of people with grand schemes of universal improvement.

I missed the book when it came out (being somewhat preoccupied with cancer), will buy it now.