The liberals may have nearly all the poets and painters and everybody else but WE have Dostoevsky and he obliterates the whole kitandkaboodle, we have Dostoevsky and so we win.But is this the full story? For your consideration, I present the following. From libertarians to upper-class high-church snobs, with a smattering of one-nation tories, Nazi sympathisers, and the unprincipled rich, here's a list of notable novelists, poets, and a few other literary types of a rightist persuasion.
- Kingsley Amis - despite early socialism, he moved rightwards through his life to become a curmudgeonly conservative
- Martin Amis - in recent years has followed his father's path, with his views on Islam condemned by many left-wingers; also anti-communist, writing books about Stalin
- Jeffrey Archer - popular novelist and former Conservative Party MP; also convicted perjurer
- Honoré de Balzac - royalist and chronicler of a society in decline
- Hilaire Belloc - the poet and writer, known for his verse for children, was an admirer of fascism and especially Mussolini; he was a devout Catholic and has been accused of anti-semitism
- Saul Bellow - a youthful leftist he moved to the right, was culturally conservative, opposing political correctness and multiculturalism
- John Betjeman - a small-c conservative: an admirer of the English upper classes, a campaigner to preserve disappearing aspects of England, scornful of mass culture, and a Catholic
- William Peter Blatty - the Exorcist writer is a donor to the US Republican party
- Robert Brasillach - French novelist and journalist who collaborated with the Nazis
- Rupert Brooke - upper-middle-class poet known for his patriotic World War One verse, although he also moved in liberal circles
- John Buchan - the author of the 39 Steps was an MP for the Unionist Party in Scotland (which later merged with the Conservative Party), a keen imperialist, and has been accused of racism
- Jorge Luis Borges - the Argentinian postmodernist was an admirer of Latin American dictators, including Pinochet
- William F. Buckley, Jr - writer, tv presenter, and occasional novelist, a leading intellectual of US Republicanism from the 1960s to the 2000s
- Roy Campbell - South African poet and Catholic, he moved to Spain in the 1930s and supported Franco (unlike most writers who went to Spain); turned against the Bloomsbury group after his wife had an affair with Vita Sackville-West
- Orson Scott Card - best known for science fiction novels such as Ender's Game, he is also a pro-Republican commentator and a Mormon
- Thomas Carlyle - Scottish historian, satirist, and essayist who distrusted democracy and modernity, and believed nations needed great men to lead them, writing an admiring biography of Frederick the Great
- Willa Cather - a novelist who was conservative both in aesthetics and politics
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline - the modernist novelist was an anti-semite and supporter of Vichy France
- François-René de Chateaubriand - French royalist and a devout Catholic
- GK Chesterton - humorist and Christian apologist, converted to Catholicism; George Orwell accused him of writing "endless tirades against Jews"
- Agatha Christie - reactionary conservative who portrayed a bygone England, her early books included various racial caricatures
- Winston Churchill - winner of Nobel prize for literature for his non-fiction, and Conservative prime minister
- EM Cioran - Romanian philosopher and essayist, a pupil and follower of far-right philosopher Nae Ionescu
- Tom Clancy - popular spy novelist, has donated large amounts of money to the US Republican party
- Robin Cook - the thriller writer, not the deceased British Labour politician, is a Republican donor
- James Fenimore Cooper - wrote widely on political matters, influenced by Jefferson, notably supporting the landowners in the New York Anti-Rent Wars in the 1840s and 50s
- Patricia Cornwell - crime writer and Jack the Ripper enthusiast who has made large donations to the US Republican party, despite being a lesbian who has spoken out for equal rights
- Noel Coward - naturally conservative, author of comedies about the upper middle classes, although he was an agnostic
- Michael Crichton - climate-change denialist who satirised political correctness and accused liberal magazine editor Michael Crowley of being a small-dicked paedophile
- Ian Curteis - British writer whose play about the Falklands war was allegedly a victim of censorship by the left-wing BBC
- Robertson Davies - Canadian novelist with old-fashioned literary style and reactionary politics
- Benjamin Disraeli - Conservative prime minister and novelist, the father of moderate one-nation conservatism
- Michael Dobbs - conservative politician and prolific novelist, best known for Francis Urquhart books
- John Dos Passos - modernist novelist, initially a communist, he moved all the way across the political spectrum to become an admirer of Joe McCarthy
- Feodor Dostoyevsky - a reformer in his youth, he later moved to the right, seeking to defend the traditional Russian spirit
- Mircea Eliade - Romanian fiction writer and philosopher of religion, a fascist in the 1930s
- TS Eliot - former banker, socially and politically conservative, also accused of anti-semitism, said: "I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics"
- James Ellroy - critically acclaimed crime novelist has expressed right-wing authoritarian viewpoints, e.g. defending the LAPD over the Rodney King beating, but elsewhere claims this was just controversialist nonsense
- William Faulkner - although a liberal in his attitudes to race, the Southern US novelist is generally judged to be overall conservative
- Julian Fellowes - a writer whose subject is the English upper classes, his Conservative politics are no great surprise, and he's often on lists of celebrity Tory supporters
- Fillià - Italian futurist writer and painter known for his religious art, had links with fascists
- Frederick Forsyth - the British thriller writer has long been a supporter of the Conservative Party
- George MacDonald Fraser - the author of the humorous Flashman novels was a military man and a traditionalist in many areas of life, prominently campaigning against the metric system
- Robert Frost - American poet of conservative political views who became a national treasure and spoke at Kennedy's inauguration; he played at being a farmer but earned his money from teaching
- JW von Goethe - romantic conservative, admired the upper classes, and opposed the numerous revolutions of the late 18th/early 19th centuries
- Terry Goodkind - Ayn Rand-influenced sword and sorcery writer with enormous sales
- Knut Hamsun - Norwegian Nobel laureate (Hunger) and later a Nazi sympathiser
- Robert Heinlein - right-wing libertarian militaristic writer of (mostly) intelligent science fiction
- Hergé - Belgian comic-book writer of conservative politics, accused of racism and collaborating with the Nazis
- Michel Houellebecq - anti-political correctness, anti-Islam, anti-women, for his admirers he offers a critique of modern liberal humanism
- Ted Hughes - misanthropic violence-loving nature poet who detested modern life and became poet laureate and friends with the Queen Mother
- JK Huysmans - in his early life, a writer of Zola-influenced liberalism, he dallied briefly with fin de siecle decadence but converted to Catholicism and became a conservative
- PD James - English crime novelist and a Conservative peer in the House of Lords
- Antony Jay - Thatcherite writer of satirical sitcom Yes Minister
- Ernst Jünger - German writer who glorified the military following World War I and opposed democracy
- Jack Kerouac - the beat novelist moved right in the 1960s, supporting the Vietnam war, becoming friends with William F Buckley, and returning to the Catholic faith he was raised in
- Rudyard Kipling - poet of British patriotism and imperialism, defender of the British soldier
- Dean Koontz - thriller writer and supporter of US Republican party
- Philip Larkin - his posthumously-published letters revealed a racist, misogynistic, right-wing private man, while his poetry showed a kindlier backward-looking conservatism
- DH Lawrence - novelist and poet had liberal views early in his life but later moved towards fascism
- CS Lewis - Christian apologist and a moderate conservative, though he avoided political association and refused a CBE from Churchill
- Wyndham Lewis - influenced by the Futurists, he was briefly a supporter of Hitler, and often anti-semitic
- Liu Xiaobo - the Chinese writer, poet, and Nobel Peace Prize-winner was an admirer of George W Bush and a defender of American imperialism who criticised John Kerry for being insufficiently right-wing; also anti-Islam
- Mario Vargas Llosa - once a supporter of Castro, he became a free-market centre-right politician, while defending human rights, and ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Peru
- André Malraux - the novelist, art historian and resistance fighter fought for the Republican side in the Spanish civil war, but in the 1960s he served as Charles de Gaulle's Minister of Cultural Affairs
- Thomas Mann - a supporter of the Kaiser in his youth, he moved in a liberal direction during the Weimar republic
- FT Marinetti - Italian proto-fascist poet, active as both an artistic and political leader; he split with Mussolini because he felt the Fascist party was too backward-looking
- Allan Massie - Scottish conservative historical novelist and journalist
- HL Mencken - satirist who opposed the New Deal and hated Franklin Roosevelt
- Stephenie Meyer - Mormon vampire novelist of conservative views
- Yukio Mishima - right-wing anti-democratic Japanese novelist and playwright who attempted a military coup
- Marianne Moore - like many in Pound and Eliot's circles, she was right-wing, a defender of American capitalism
- Iris Murdoch - a youthful communist and populariser of Sartre, she seemed to move rightwards, and like Ayn Rand was a fan of strong-willed almost demonic men; her philosophy focused on topics such as moral virtue; she opposed literary experimentalism, and demanded striking miners be shot
- Vladimir Nabokov - a conservative aesthete who fled Stalin's Russia
- VS Naipaul - Indo-Trinidadian Nobel laureate, conservative, accused of disliking the third world and Muslims
- Flannery O'Connor - Catholic moralist who mocked the godlessness of modern life in grotesque fiction
- Alexander Pope - conservative satirist
- PJ O'Rourke - satirist of right-wing sympathies
- John Osborne - angry young man who turned into a cantankerous old man
- Luigi Pirandello - experimental playwright allied himself with Mussolini, although his supporters claim it was purely from self-interest
- Ezra Pound - sophisticated and erudite aesthete, accused of being sympathetic to Mussolini in World War Two and imprisoned
- Anthony Powell - his Dance to the Music of Time chronicled rich English bohemians and he was an upper-class conservative
- Marcel Proust - upper-class aesthete, although homosexual, came from a conservative background; he avoided politics and his political position is contested
- Ayn Rand - popular philosopher and author of very long novels, known for her defence of entrepreneurs and for championing reason over emotions
- John Crowe Ransom - conservative US Southerner, involved with the Southern Agrarians (backward-looking pro-Confederate grouping) for a time
- Tim Rice - the lyricist, writer, and TV personality has supported the Conservative party for ages; he also does a lot of good work for charity
- Walter Scott - Scottish historical novelist of Tory sympathies, active in conservation but condemned by Mark Twain for romanticising war and chivalry; while pro-Jacobite and romantic about Scottish history he also defended the union with England
- Moshe Shamir - Israeli novelist, playwright, and politician, moved from early socialism to right-wing Likud and Tehiya parties
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn - the Soviet dissident had an understandable hatred of communism; on his arrival in the USA he allied himself with the neo-conservatives who believed the Soviet Union was the gravest threat to the USA's existence, and called for its destruction
- Nicholas Sparks - the author of drippy romantic fantasies donated to Republican senator Elizabeth Dole
- Gertrude Stein - collaborated with Vichy France; claims that she called for Hitler to be given the Nobel Peace Prize were probably a joke
- Wallace Stevens - insurance company executive who wrote abtruse modernist poetry
- Tom Stoppard - playwright is generally reckoned to be slightly right of centre despite his human rights work; an anti-communist long-associated with east European dissidents
- Jonathan Swift - conservative, devout Anglican satirist, converted from Whig to Tory
- Allen Tate - American agrarian poet, who later became a Roman Catholic and a legendary womaniser
- Alfred Lord Tennyson - the poet laureate was a traditional English gentleman who celebrated military virtue and the chivalrous middle ages, but was more liberal on some causes - he refused a baronetcy from Disraeli and was agnostic
- Hunter S Thompson - a libertarian and great believer in gun rights, although he hated most Republicans (despite a grudging respect for Nixon)
- JRR Tolkien - deeply conservative and strongly Catholic throughout his life, he supported Franco in the Spanish civil war, although he hated Hitler for perverting northern-European myths and traditions
- John Updike - novelist who wrote about suburbia with a conservative viewpoint
- Robert Penn Warren - poet, critic, and novelist (political satire All the King's Men), who had links with the Southern Agrarians but moved left and later became a father figure of American liberalism
- Keith Waterhouse - the author of Billy Liar was a Daily Mail columnist for decades until his death
- Evelyn Waugh - satirist of the British upper classes and author of Brideshead Revisited, a right-wing Catholic
- AN Wilson - British novelist, biographer, and newspaper columnist for the right-wing press, of firmly Conservative views
- PG Wodehouse - although he satirised British fascism in the 1930s, he did broadcasts from Nazi Germany in World War Two, and has been condemned as a collaborator; certainly a small-c conservative
- Tom Wolfe - satirist, journalist, and winner of the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Prize, an admirer of George W Bush and long-time Republican
- William Wordsworth - a radical in his youth, he became more conservative as he got older, repudiating his initial support for the French Revolution and eventually becoming a member of the establishment
- WB Yeats - Irish nationalist and mystic, a Nobel laureate for his poetry, who became increasingly conservative and eccentric and even flirted with fascism
