Where have all the babies gone?
Progressives rage about the right to abort while birth rates tumble
Transition loses traction
Green energy cools down
Enthralled
The news that Germaine Greer had put herself into a retirement home in sight of the Queensland forest she had…
Aussie life
Coined, as it was, by a dead white man whose oeuvre is considered one of the crowning achievements of Western…
Language
No language column can ignore Professor Brendan Murphy’s extraordinary 78-word definition of ‘woman’. As you know, when he was questioned…
Two doomed referendums
How virtue-signalling has replaced good government
Failure to govern
What is the purpose of a Conservative government? It’s a reasonable question for voters to ask. In 2019 Boris Johnson…
What bow – and why is it burning?
‘Jerusalem’ may be our unofficial national anthem, but don’t ask anyone who sings it to tell you what it means, says Philip Hensher
A death-haunted city
Naples, the tatterdemalion capital of the Italian south, is said to be awash with heroin. Chinese-run morphine refineries on its…
Mourning glory
On Tuesday night I was at the world première of a motet by Sir James MacMillan and I don’t think…
Hysterical accusations
‘Witch-hunt’ has become a handy metaphor for online persecutions, especially of women, though these days it is reputations that go…
Movers and shakers
Anthony Sattin begins with a quotation from Bruce Chatwin, who famously tried all his life to produce a book about…
The virtue of restraint
Louise Perry is on a mission: ‘It wasn’t enough just to point out the problems with our new sexual culture,’…
Cakeconomics
Why Rishi Sunak quit
The contenders
Who are the Tories lining up to replace Boris?
Going the whole hog
A popular pastime in Britain is to post one’s breakfast on social media for strangers to pass judgment on bacon…
Inflation pressures may be easing but the worst still lies ahead
Is anything anywhere getting noticeably better – economically speaking – or at least less bad? Are commodities and manufactured goods…
Portrait of the week
Home Rishi Sunak resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sajid Javid as Health Secretary. (Nadhim Zahawi accepted the post…
The age of the anti-natalists
As of 2023, the novel for which I may still be best known will have been out for 20 years.…
Letters
Sturgeon’s single issue Sir: Nicola Sturgeon needs to be careful what she wishes for. Declaring that the next general election…
Puzzle No. 710
White to play. J. Polgar-Carlsen, Casual blitz game, Madrid 2022. Carlsen’s last move 15…Ra8-c8 was a losing blunder. How did…
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
To study international politics since the turn of the century has been, in large part, to study the changing nature…
End of the affair
When did mistresses forget the art of secrecy?
An existential war
Even wealthy émigrés are prepared to fight for Russia
Playing the ace card
The radical feminist publishing house Verso has begun, in its tweets, to refer to a section of the population as…
