Too close to China?
Angus Houston’s responses to MH370 raise questions about his fitness to review our defences
A very talented family
Conflicts of interest at the heart of the Ardern government
Don’t be routine
It’s a marvellous thing that the great Indian conductor Zubin Mehta will be wielding the baton for that illustrious group…
Aussie life
‘Why can’t a woman be more like a man? complains Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, a musical whose title…
Language
British journalist Richard Godwin has alerted me to what may be the trendiest word of the moment: ‘namecore’. This is…
Show me Trump and I’ll show you the crime
If the US falls, so do we
The realpolitik of Saudi oil profits and that infamous fist-bump
How outraged should we be that Saudi Aramco has reported a world-record quarterly profit of $48 billion, representing a giant…
The shameful truth: terrorism works
This is a bleak version of looking on the bright side, but what’s astonishing about last week’s vicious stabbing in…
Falling stars
If you want real acting in films, forget the leads – it’s in the supporting roles that you’ll find true talent, says Tanya Gold
Portrait of the week
Home The annual rate of inflation rose to 10.1 per cent, its highest since 1982. Average wages rose by 4.7…
The Truss challenge
‘Whatever else you do, don’t step backwards,’ a man in the crowd shouts to Rishi Sunak as he stands on…
Sole Véronique
One of the joys of writing about old-fashioned food is coming across dishes that are new to me, and turn…
We get the picture
Philip Guston is hard to dislike. The most damning critique levied against the canonical mid-century American painter is that he…
Edinburgh Notebook
When I was in my twenties, exactly 50 Edinburgh Festivals ago, Frank Dunlop directed the first professional production of Joseph…
High life
Coronis I suppose there’s always a first time, and looking back it was bound to happen. I scrambled off a…
Low life
An isolated Provençal stone farmhouse from the outside; from the inside a comfortable English country house. Sunk into the garriguea…
Bridge
My husband is a writer (John Preston), whose recent books were better received than he had ever dared hope. When…
Letters
No competition Sir: Ross Clark’s compelling critique of the water companies comes to the wrong conclusion (‘Water isn’t working’, 13…
2569: Anadad
Round the grid from 1 runs a quotation (1,3,4.2,5,3,5,3,2,6) from a play followed by the dramatist’s name (two words). Two…
The first Olympiad
Everyone remembers their first Olympiad. As I boarded the flight to Chennai last month, it struck me that two full…
Puzzle No. 716
Black to play. A variation from McShane-Hamitevici, Chennai 2022. I avoided this position, but lost in a different way. White…
Initial embarrassment
In Competition No. 3262, you were invited to submit a poem on behalf of Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss in…
Solution to 2566: Somewhere XII
30 July is Independence Day in Vanuatu in MELANESIA (23D). Its capital city is PORT VILA (39/16), one of its…
Finger-wagging and flawed
‘Diversity is woven into the very soul of the story.’ If those words of praise from a rave review in…
Doctor doctor
In a new hour-long monologue, Burn, Alan Cumming examines the life and work of Robert Burns. The biographical material is…
