A courtroom giant
Sydney Kentridge, the protagonist of Thomas Grant’s superb legal saga The Mandela Brief, is that trickiest of biographical subjects: a…
Anti heroes
Why this mad insistence that everyone has special powers?
Low life
In theory TikTok knows nothing about me. I have posted two videos: one of my grandsons kicking a football in…
High life
I now find resorts more fun out of season. Civilised tourists are as rare as an intelligent Hollywood movie, so…
Wild life
Laikipia You know things are bad when the zebras are thin. Even during most droughts, zebras are like matrons at…
Real life
‘That will be £7.50 please,’ said the girl in the bakery to the cyclist in black Lycra after he put…
The secret sharers
In February 1941 four US officers were landed from a British warship at Sheerness, bundled into vehicles and driven to…
Bridge
The bridge world is coming back to life with a bang. The World Championships were held (live) in March, the…
Voices of the veld
Julia Blackburn’s Dreaming the Karoo is the diary of a very bad year: from March 2020, when a research trip…
Mystic multitudes
Matthew Arnold cannot have been much fun on holiday. Watching waves crash on the pebbles at Dover Beach, he heard…
Alfred the Great
Andrew Lycett on the pugnacious British press baron dedicated to fighting the first world war through newsprint
OK groomer
If you happened to be walking through Southwark this week you might have been accosted by a big public sign.…
This other Eden
Whatever one thinks of the government’s plans to send refugees to Rwanda, it was amusing to see this country’s left…
The commercialisation of virtue creates division
Manly Sea Eagles coach Des Hasler said the club has taken ‘learnings’ from this week’s gay pride jersey debacle. But…
Did Rishi Sunak’s interview gamble pay off?
Rishi Sunak took a major risk tonight, agreeing to a one-on-one interview with Andrew Neil on Channel 4 News. As…
Andrew Neil’s interview with Rishi Sunak – as it happened
Rishi Sunak was interviewed by Andrew Neil on Channel 4 tonight. He was quizzed on inflation, the NHS backlog and more. Liz Truss,…
William Shatner: ‘Gene Roddenberry would hate Woke Star Trek’
The 91-years-young star of the original Star Trek series has criticised newer additions (see here, here, and here) to the Sci-Fi universe, declaring, Star Trek…
Is the eurozone in crisis?
Is the eurozone heading for another 2010-style sovereign debt crisis? Today comes the news that inflation in the eurozone hit…
Scots are being sacrificed to a failed drug policy
The Scottish government’s attempts to spin the latest drugs deaths statistics are a grim response to a total failure of…
Rebekah Vardy’s spectacular own goal
Jamie Vardy is one of English football’s most prolific strikers. But thanks to his wife, his surname will be forever…
Giorgia Meloni has beaten Silvio Berlusconi at his own game
Now it’s official: if the right-wing coalition wins Italy’s election, Giorgia Meloni will almost definitely be prime minister. Earlier this…
Prince Harry mocked by Supreme Court judge
‘Privacy’ was the reason given for Harry and Meghan upping sticks and leaving Britain in early 2020. The dilettante duke…
Struggling Brits need help, not free theatre tickets
Lurking in the background of the Tory leadership contest, the cost of living crisis rumbles on. With Autumn round the…
WHO are the ‘Reds under the bed’
Face-mask enthusiast and British communist Professor Susan Michie has been appointed to a worryingly influential role at the World Health…
On the frontline at Drag Queen Story Hour
Henleaze, a suburb in the north of Bristol, is an unlikely place for a protest. This is a well-to-do area…
