James Agate

1877–1947 · English theatre critic and diarist, The Sunday Times

James Agate was the most-read theatre critic in Britain between the wars, writing the weekly drama column of The Sunday Times from 1923 until his death in 1947, and keeping the sprawling published diary Ego. He was a professional phrase-maker — the sort of writer who tossed off a lethal formulation in the middle of a notice and moved on. The barbarism-to-decadence jibe appears exactly that way: buried mid-paragraph in a grumpy 1926 review of a Russian play, aimed at Russia, and never claimed by him as an epigram at all.

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“America Is the Only Country That Went from Barbarism to Decadence Without Civilization In Between”

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