SOURCE: "But What Good Came of It at Last? An Inquest on Modernism," in Essays by Divers Hands, edited by Michael Holroyd, Boydell Press, 1982, pp. 61-77.

In the following essay, which was originally delivered as a lecture before the Royal Society of Literature in 1979, Conquest questions the ultimate artistic and cultural value of Modernism.

You will not expect—indeed you will probably be delighted not to have to listen to—a full conspectus of the modernist movement, tracing all the schools through cubism and vorticism and expressionism, through suprematism and constructivism and De Stijl, through Valery and Kafka and Gertrude Stein, through Merz and Blast and Transition, describing the interactions, the sectarian strife, the manifestos, the denunciations. And you will not, I hope, expect me to deal with modernism in every field—for instance in music or in architecture (though much of that, unfortunately, seems to be more...