The pleasure of not knowing
A few years ago the podcaster Lex Fridman published a list of books that he was hoping to read in…
Where was my invitation to Your Party?
For perhaps the first time in my life I have experienced ‘fomo’ – fear of missing out. It is strange…
Sir Tom Stoppard: ‘I aspire to write for posterity’
Sir Tom Stoppard, the British playwright, died at his home in Dorset yesterday aged 88. In 2019, he gave a…
The theatre isn’t a thinktank
Readers tend not to approve of rows between columnists, but I must take issue with something Lloyd Evans wrote in…
Trump’s Epstein gamble
It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was…
Marjorie Taylor Greene: anti-Trump resistance hero?
It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was…
Justice in war is messy
At the end of last month, a judge in Belfast issued a verdict that was both right and wrong. The…
New York is not the city that Mamdani pretends it is
There is an unhappy history of left-wing Britons getting involved in US elections. Back in 2004, the Guardian organised a letter-writing campaign,…
Don’t fear the bogeyman
Britain is beset by a bogeyman. A giant, mystical beast that the public are forever being threatened with. Remember last…
Imagine what Enoch Powell might have said
The great John O’Sullivan has a story about Enoch Powell which he keeps promising to put into print. Since he…
The pathology of politics
Researchers from Imperial College London this week released an analysis of the health of voters in the UK. In a…
The increasing fear felt by Britain’s Jews
If you walked down the Strand in London on Tuesday this week you would have been greeted by hundreds of…
The mainstreaming of leftist violence
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Democratic lawmakers and commentators found themselves in a quandary. On the one hand,…
The Murray Test for TV drama
It is almost a century since Ronald Knox wrote his ‘Ten Commandments’ for detective fiction. Most of them still hold…
First they came for the Jews…
It was moving to watch Keir Starmer announce this week, from a corridor in Downing Street, that his government has…
The political resurrection of Christianity
There is a passage in Milan Kundera’s novelisitic essay ‘Testaments Betrayed’ where he writes about the nature of history. Man…
Beware the restless, shifty liars
I have only been to Alexandria once, some years ago, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power, but it struck…
Can anyone save Britain from self-destruction?
Tens of thousands of people turned out on the streets last week to protest against mass immigration. The protestors were…
The wrong kind of flag-raising
At the end of Sky News’s coverage of last year’s Notting Hill Carnival, its correspondent recited the usual list of…
The oppression of Sally Rooney
Almost a decade ago the Irish academic Liam Kennedy published a tremendous book with the title Unhappy the Land: the…
Clive of India must not fall
The only MP I have ever really wanted to marry is Thangam Debbonaire. The former Labour MP for Bristol West…
My victory over Mohammed Hijab
One of the occupational hazards of being a journalist is being hounded by litigants. Indeed, one of the reasons why…
How to handle the Wagner problem
There are deep ructions across Europe, as in Britain. All come down to the same thing. The societies in question…
MAGA, Epstein and the paedo files
Bill Clinton published another memoir last year, entitled Citizen, and I take it that everyone read the book the minute…
The pointlessness of ‘smashing the gangs’
‘Smash the gangs’ is the fascinating slogan that Keir Starmer’s government has settled on for tackling illegal migration. What is…
