Laudator Temporis Acti

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), A Clerk of Oxenford (1954; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 47:

Is he read nowadays at all? I never hear anyone talk of him. Of course, this proves nothing. Many a writer, including some of those whom he admired, has failed of admiration until long after his death. Perhaps the time has not come for Strachey to be enjoyed. If our own civilization should move more and more completely into a period of perfect officialdom and supreme organization, with everything arranged by the State, everything authorized and docketed in triplicate and quadruplicate, with a group of unchallengeably powerful officials at the top directing everybody's lives, then the clawed and sharp-toothed critics like Strachey will be prized more and more—not as historians but as satirists—and, if they survive at all, will be read with more and more enthusiasm. At least, until the officials find out ...