William F. Buckley, a Roman Catholic, is a political conservative who firmly believed that the Soviet Union and the countries it dominated were the enemies of freedom and civilization. He decried the liberal refusal to recognize the threat of communism and to struggle more vigorously against it.

He particularly objected to what he saw as the moral cowardice of the West in allowing the partition of Europe after the Second World War, and in refusing to aid freedom fighters in Berlin, Hungary, or anywhere in the world men and women rise up in rebellion against communism. Although he recognized that some right-minded people can be attracted to leftist causes out of misplaced idealism, he continued to insist that all but the thoroughly benighted must learn the error of their ways eventually.

In his first novel, Saving the Queen, his social ideas are strongly elitist. His heroes...