Is Shakespeare ‘far-right’ now?
Oh – and the Collected Works of Shakespeare. I forgot to mention that last week: that among the books on…
Can you really be radicalised by Great British Railway Journeys?
The late Robert Conquest adumbrated three rules of politics. Perhaps the most famous (also known as O’Sullivan’s law) is that…
Where have all the grown-ups gone?
Last week 100,000 civil servants from 124 government departments went on strike. This fact prompts a number of questions, not…
America’s colour blindness
How many black cops does it take to commit a racist hate crime? The latest correct answer is ‘five’. That’s…
Pride comes before a fall
Hockey is one of those games, like lacrosse, that alters as it crosses the Atlantic. In Britain, if a man…
If not Biden, who?
Monday was Martin Luther King Jr Day in the United States. And this year it was most memorable for two…
If only Harry took after his grandfather
Do you remember the Duke of Edinburgh awards? Some of you may even have one somewhere. An award for map-reading,…
How to get nothing done
I sometimes wonder whether our government makes any decisions at all. In fact I’m trying to think of any area…
How to save the BBC
Towards the end of his life the art critic Hilton Kramer was overheard leaving a cinema with his wife. One…
Britain doesn’t need reinventing
What is the most hubristic line ever written? Against some very stiff competition I would say it is that famous…
The new vandals: how museums turned on their own collections
The self-flagellation of British museums
Fifa has scored a spectacular own goal
Unlike some fair-weather fans I maintain a fairly constant interest in the workings of Fifa. Not because I especially care…
The delicious fall of Sam Bankman-Fried
Dame Edna Everage says one of life’s most precious gifts is the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others.…
The weaponisation of ‘bullying’
Bullying appears to be suffering from inflation, like everything else. Certainly as an art form it seems to be in…
The negligence of ‘not in my lifetime’
It is sometimes said, correctly, that conservatism is more an attitude than an ideology. And for me there have always…
The West’s uncivilised euthanasia policy
So much is happening on the surface at the moment that it can be difficult to notice certain undercurrents. Since…
How to protest the protestors
These are bleak times in our land, and we must take our pleasures where we can. Personally I have been…
Is what Conor Burns did really so appalling?
There are times when I feel like certain rakes must have done when they realised that the Regency period was suddenly…
Things can always get worse
As I was saying, way back in July, it is hard to love the Conservative party. Every time it tries…
I’m in trouble with the police
There is almost nothing I like more than a running battle. As my friend Julie Burchill also says, when a…
Leicester and the downside with diversity
As I have said many times in recent years, if you import the world’s people you import the world’s problems.…
A hereditary monarchy is good for politics
I suppose it was inevitable that with the death of HM the Queen certain floodgates would open. During her reign…
Who cares about Liz Truss's 'diverse' cabinet?
‘Great offices of state set to contain no white men’ was the way one national newspaper reported the formation of…
Green parties are facing a reality check
How pleasant it is to watch an idea fall apart. Especially when it is an idea held by people you…
Salman Rushdie and a question of power
Whenever a terrorist attack occurs, like the recent attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie, our society falls into the usual platitudes.…
