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Anthony M. Ludovici is a British dissident, philosopher, sociologist, social critic and polyglot. He is known as a proponent of aristocracy, ultra-royalism, anti-egalitarianism and anti-socialism while operating as a fringe conservative author in the British émigré scene. His works touch on subjects including art, metaphysics, politics, economics, religion, the differences between the sexes and races, health, and eugenics many of which were inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Ludovici began his career as an artist, painting and illustrating books. He was private secretary to sculptor Auguste Rodin for several months in 1906. Despite a promising career in the art scene, Ludovici has primarily worked as a translator and emerged as a major political figure in the 'Continental Exiles' of the British Empire.
Biography[]
Early Life and the Great War[]
Ludovici was born in London, England on 8 January 1882 to Albert Ludovici, and Marie Cals. Ludovici's father and grandfather, Albert Ludovici, Sr., were both artists. He was of Basque, French, German and Italian ancestry. He was educated privately, in England and abroad but chiefly by his mother. As a young student he became friends with Harry Guy Radcliffe Drew, whom he met at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Some years later he befriended Drew's young daughters Dorothy and Joyce. He married Elsie Finnimore Buckley on 20 March 1920, and they first lived at 35 Central Hill, Upper Norwood in South London. He spent several years in Germany where he studied Nietzsche's writings in the original German and became fluent in several languages. A move that shaped his future career.
During the year 1906, Ludovici was private secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and as such had a close association with him. Rodin heavily informed Ludovici's own career and views on art. He later wrote of his personal experiences of Rodin's personality and works, as well as his own opinions on these subjects, in articles first appearing in the Cornhill Magazine in 1921, publishing Personal Reminiscences of Auguste Rodin the next year.
Following his time working for Rodin, he began lecturing on art, politics, religion, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, about whom he wrote Who is to be Master of the World?: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909) and Nietzsche: His Life and Works (1910), considered a Nietzschean history of art in terms of rising aristocratic and decadent-democratic epochs. This was the year of the first Parliament Act 1911, which seriously reduced the power of the House of Lords. It also marked a watershed change in Ludovici's writing, as he drifted to a more overt political line, and an embracement of reactionary politics though Ludovici remained outside of any political organisation and regarded himself as an 'independent thinker'.
During the Great he joined the New Army as a translator, and then went on to serve as an artillery officer at Armentières and the Somme, where he described himself as 'a miserable and vermin-ridden trench-rat'. Ludovici was later recruited to work in the Intelligence Staff at the War Office, where after two years of service he rose to head of his department, MI6 A. At the end of the Great War, Ludovici was was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services in battle and at the War Office, though he immediately returned it because he felt that it was too easily attainable and held by too many people. He attained the rank of Captain during the Great War and whas subsequently taken on 'Captain' as a nickname.
The British Civil War[]
Ludovici had remained outside of organised politics through the pre-revolution period, though he did briefly become involved with both the British Conservative League and National Conservative League as an outside aid. Ludovici attempted to distance him from Rotha Lintorn-Orman and found her 'too ineffective, too prone to drinking and far too typical of decadent party society'. He remained on the fringes of politic of this time but began a slow entry and wrote prolificly for various right-wing journals often criticising the labour movement and attacking the Labour government for eroding the natural order of society. Despite his opposition to Labour, Ludovici spared no criticism for the National Government who he regarded as fundamentally corrupt and a product of the degenerative democratic system. As such, the impending and violent reaction to this outburst of left-wing rage would be brutal but still desirable and a natural course of action in sparking a new 'aristocratic golden age'.
With the outbreak of violence and revolution in 1924, Ludovici supported the crackdown and wrote in Patriot, a right-wing newsletter, that this was a natural reaction to the 'cancerous growth of democratic decadence' and hypothesised that following the crushing of the rebellion it would serve as the impetus for the ushering in of a new order focused on aristocratic and reactionary rule. Ludovici was commissioned as a Captain into the Royalist Army, being place in charge of a North-Eastern artillery detachment. By 1925, he had been transferred back to the Intelligence Staff but he wrote in his personal diaries that he felt the Royalist cause was slowly dooming itself by an inability to take harsher and firm action against the rebel forces and sympathisers. Ludovici resigned from the Intelligence Staff in the middle of 1925 and was drafted into helping establish loyalist militias and 'stay-behind' groups that would serve to stoke terror behind rebel lines and delay enemy advances though he saw little action in this role and only trained two units before the operation was suspended. In November, he was forced to surrender himself and his wife to rebel soldiers, professing to be an artillery officer in the army rather than a more valuable (and dangerous) intelligence officer. Ludovici was tried at a revolutionary court and sentenced to an internment camp on the Welsh coast where he spent the rest of the year and much of 1926. Ludovici described life in the camp as 'mundane mostly, often fraught with hardship but the boredom and disinterest of the jailers was more liable to kill than starvation'. Despite the hopes of his captors, this imprisonment only strengthened his far-right resolve and antipathy to the new socialist order.
A Voice of Dissent[]
Ludovici was finally released from internment in November of 1926 when he was no longer deemed a public threat, partially due to general amnesties being handed out to clear out the new struggling internment system. Many of Ludovici's political works were proscribed as reactionary and banned though his artistic writings were spared and enter a period of new interest in the budding British revolutionary art scene. Ludovici returned to London and initially struggled to gain work before taking on a job an art critic at the National Gallery of British Art. He used this role to criticise the British avant-garde and railed against 'abstract' and 'modernist' art, two strands he particularly despised.
In his private life, Ludovici began to re-involve himself with reactionary politics though he did not join any organisation in a full capacity for various reasons. Rotha Lintorn-Orman attempted to solicit his support in 1927 to join her Legion of St. George but he declined and instead opted to take a position as a semi-regular contributor for English Patriot. For a time, Ludocivi maintained this low profile and kept largely to the sidelines of the underground but his works gradually became of interest. Indeed, Ludovici's romanticism of an aristocratic and feudalistic past struck a chord with the ultra-Royalist and reactionary followers of Lintorn-Orman. For a time, Ludovici wrote for the heavily antisemitic group, the Britons, on a history of 'the Jewish people' and their influence in Britain. John Henry Clarke, leader of the Britons, allowed Ludovici use the group's publishing house to disseminate his other political works.
In 1928, Ludovici encountered William John Sanderson, a London barrister who had been involved with various royalist ventures before the civil war and had become a committed loyalist in its aftermath. Like Ludovici, Sanderson was a reactionary ultra-royalist, though he diverged in that Sanderson was an English nationalist. Ludovici felt inclined to the group and joined shortly after, becoming one of its main writers and theorists, publishing some 3 books and 20 pamphlets on the Mistery though these have largely been lost to time. Ludovici had largely come to dominate the group by 1930 and he successfully pushed for its fusion into larger far-right ventures in the near future.
Leader of the Underground[]
By 1931 the British far-right underground had undergone an extensive evolution, now finally fracturing after varying periods of solidification and growth. While this period saw a supposed height of membership, it also saw a decline in activity and organisation, limiting its ability to conduct attacks against the state or leverage political power. In later reflections Ludovici argued this was arguably for the better as in its early period, the far-right was no less disparate but actively harassed by hostile authorities and incapable of forming a cohesive program to actually undermine and eventually overthrow the state. To combat this, the Mistery and its collaborators sought to establish 'intellectual coteries' across the country and sympathetic exile groups abroad. Ludovici was to a degree successful in the endeavor and the English Mistery swelled in size, particularly among foreign backers in both Canada, and the European exile community.
Anthony Ludovici. Photographed at his home in Berlin. Date unknown.
By September 1931, after extensive building of his 'literary network, Ludovici met with other far-right notables and began to discuss the future of their efforts and closer cooperation was agreed upon. While it was decided not to merge into a single organisation, a shared newsletter, New Briton, was established and a pseudo-successor to the Loyalist League (records indicate it may utilise the same name) was christened to coordinate paramilitary and terror efforts. Ludovici became the informal 'leader' of this coterie and various other groups in Ludovici's sphere were gradually absorbed into the Mistery. But the ideology of the Mistery was not universally accepted and it clashed with Arnold Leese who felt the Mistery was a 'romantic fiction society' rather than a mass movement that could challenge the state. Leese repeatedly criticised Ludovici for his 'faux-intellectualism' and focus on a romanticised ideal of a feudalistic England, detached from the modern world. Leese split with the movement (forming his own rival RNPL) and Ludovici went into a self-imposed exile in Europe to organise among exile groups.
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Currently, Ludovici largely resides in Germany but has traveled to other European countries with significant exile populations to approach more reactionary British émigrés. Rumours have speculated that Ludovici has at times been smuggled into Britain to meet far-right radicals still in the country. Ludovici's modern politics have come to encompass elements of aristocratic conservatism, anti-syndicalism, anti-egalitarianism, anti-feminism, anti-liberalism, anti-Christianity, British integral nationalism and more unusually: esoteric English nationalism.
Politics[]
Ideology[]
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Ludovici's primary political involvement has come in the form being a founder and the de facto leader of the underground and reactionary political club, the Cliveden Set. While the organisation has never produced a manifesto, Ludovici's own politics have effectively formed the basis for the movement causing it to encompass 'ultra-royalist' and anti-egalitarian, anti-syndicalist, anti-liberal thought. Ludovici has described himself in his works as an 'Anglo-Saxon Chauvinist'; anti-Feminist; integralist nationalist; 'arch-reactionary' and a Nietzschean or conservative thinker. Intriguingly, Ludovici's works have express support for both British and English nationalism, with the latter encompassed under the ideals of 'English Mistery'. Ludovici has argued these ideas are not mutually exclusive, on the basis that any British nation would be guided by the 'inherently superior English people'.
The Cliveden Set's and Ludovici's stance on the monarchy is vague and often contradictory, with Ludovici referring to himself as a royalist but also denouncing 'Western monarchism', claiming it has been corrupted by constitutionalism and the tenets of the Enlightenment. In some writings, he has referred to himself as an 'oligarchist' and placed emphasis on aristocratic hierarchy rather than outright absolutist royalism. To this end, Ludovici has stated that any rebuilding of Britain would likely need a period of oligarchical dictatorship before a monarchy could be re-established. However, Ludovici remains a devoted monarchist and holds Charles I in high regard, with the Cliveden Set still endorsing monarchical elements with Ludovici claiming that 'inbreeding and hereditary' features are necessary to good leaders. Likewise, many of his works have called for the legalisation and promotion of incest.
Despite this contradictory nature, Ludovici maintains a close relationship with Carl-Eduard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha having at times proclaimed should the German army conquer Britain, he would make an ideal king for Britain, citing the Duke's own absolutist style of rule. Though to contrast this, at other times he has said that Carl-Eduard's position in a German controlled Britain would be decided on the basis of its political feasibility and if Carl-Eduard would be determined to be an 'ideal sovereign' for a post-syndicalist Britain. Despite this, Carl-Eduard maintains relations with the Cliveden Set and funds the group.
Ludovici has also wrote multiple other works outside the regular scope of politics such as race-relations; the position of women in society; opposition to abstract art and the development of German politics and society in contrast to his native Britain.
What is English Mistery?[]
The English Mistery (an old word for a guild) was a political and esoteric fringe group briefly active in the mid-to-late 1920s in the south of England. Founded by writer, William Sanderson, the English Mistery functioned as a small discussion group promoting anti-feminist, antisemitic, anti-syndicalist, English nationalist, rhetoric. Ludovici became a committed member shortly after its founding and helped formulate its ideology. Regardless, Ludovici was fascinated by Sanderson's ideas regarding aristocracy, feudalism and other politics, going as far as to propose these would make an ideal blueprint for a 'English renaissance'. With the formation of the Cliveden Set (Ludovici formed it separately of the Mistery) it was quickly absorbed into the new body and informed the Cliveden Set's ideological tendencies. Ludovici went as far as to say the Cliveden Set's 'primary ideology' was English Mistery.
Mistery meant the mastery of service: to serve and to be subordinate. The Mistery's ideal system was an a hierarchical state and a nation of racially pure Englishmen who were led by a monarch and supported by strong, oligarchic leaders. They wanted to return leadership to the English aristocracy; a small elite would rule over the English race with those 'submissive races' to be held at the whim of their English masters. Much of the more esoteric elements were dropped or toned down altogether but the core premise of a rigidly controlled 'English' state embodying anti-Enlightenment, anti-liberal, anti-egalitarian ideas and commanded by aristocratic governance would remain. The Ottawa-based Exile, Gerard Wallop, 9th Earl of Portsmouth, maintained correspondence with members of the group and be particularly interested in its ideas, founding his own Canadian splinter organisation: the English Array.
Personal Life & Works[]
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