The unique, bittersweet beauty of Irish ruins
The Celtic Tiger has come and gone. Over the past 30 years, billions of pounds poured into Irish houses and…
Gibraltar, the rock of ages past
How lazy, snobbish and wrong it is to mock Gibraltar for the lager and fish and chips clichés. Yes, you…
Britain has become a country of braggarts and show-offs
Over the past 20 years, the old British trait of self-deprecation has been killed off. And in its place, boasting…
Requiem for the Common Entrance Exam
So farewell, then, to the Common Entrance Exam, bane of a million schoolchildren’s lives since it was introduced in 1904.…
The English clergy at their oddest – a compendium
As the wordy title of this book and the name of its author suggest, this is a faux-archaic, fogeyish journey…
British men shouldn’t go topless in public. Ever
England didn’t just lose the World Cup. When it comes to male nudity, the country has also lost its sense…
All hail Æthelflæd! The first Brexiteer
This week, Prince Edward was paying tribute to a much-loved Queen. Not ‘Mummy’ — but Queen Æthelflæd, Alfred the Great’s…
Asterix and the sheer brilliance of his creators
A sterix, te amamus! For those not lucky enough to learn their Latin from the dazzling René Goscinny and Albert…
How to be a tourist in Europe
Last week, I was in the Florence Baptistery by 8.30 a.m. That used to be early enough to avoid the…
In London, dinner parties and murder exist side by side
Last month, a 17-year-old business student of Somali extraction, Abdikarim Hassan, was knifed to death outside a corner shop, 70…
Homer’s Trojan War epic richly deserves its lavish new BBC adaptation
Did the Trojan War really take place? The Foreign Secretary certainly thinks so. ‘The Iliad must have happened,’ Boris Johnson…
Why the sleepy old CoE is just a greedy, moneygrubbing property tycoon
Holy smoke! The sleepy old Church of England is a greedy, money-grubbing property tycoon. This month, it emerged that since…
Harry, Meghan and the irresistible rise of the glamocracy
The world may be dazzled by Prince Harry marrying a divorced, mixed-race American TV star. But his grand friends and…
The real reason for the fall of Rome? Climate change
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? It’s a question that’s been puzzling writers ever since Edward Gibbon wrote The History…
Homer Simpson meets Homer
Milan Kundera has said that Homer’s Odyssey was the first novel. I’m not so sure — the verse kind of…
Algy Cluff on Margaret Thatcher, Robert Mugabe and Brexit
Algy Cluff is the longest-serving oilman in the North Sea. He was one of the first to drill for oil…
The British are leaders in graphic novels so why do we not take the art form more seriously?
Art Spiegelman, the American cartoonist behind Maus, the celebrated Holocaust cartoon, dreamt up a good definition of graphic novels: comics…
The holy relics of the Easter Rising: from hallowed flags to rebel biscuits
This is the first exhibition I’ve been to where the Prime Minister joined the hacks at the press view. A…
Justin Trudeau has his mother’s looks – and his father’s dodgy economics
Quebec City Canada is about to hit a new high. If the supercute 44-year-old prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has…
Boris and Dave’s schoolboy rivalry is journalistic wishful thinking
The Prime Minister is pretty angry with Boris. But the idea that they’ve competed with each other since school is…
Why the British make a virtue of defeat
When Henry Worsley died last month attempting the first solo, unaided expedition across the Antarctic, he was 30 miles short…
The history of London through its parish churches
John Betjeman, the patron saint of English parish churches, once warned against praising British buildings too much. Be careful before…
The secret brilliance of Prince Philip’s ‘gaffes’
I’ve just been on the receiving end of a Prince Philip gaffe, of sorts, and I loved it. It was…
Corbyn's purge of the Oxbridge set
Labour was once the clever party. Under Jeremy Corbyn, its front bench is purged of Oxbridge intellectuals
Adventures on the isle that seduced Odysseus
Gozo — Malta’s tiny island neighbour — was once rather a crucial spot in the Mediterranean. The Knights of Malta…
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