Letting China join the WTO was the worst decision the West ever made
It’s not often that you come across a book that completely transforms your understanding of the world. Just recently I’ve…
With these documentaries, the BBC has lost any claim to impartiality
Because the rise of the Nazis is a topic so rarely mentioned these days, least of all in schools, the…
How to beat the autumn blues
You know that awful, gnawing, depressing feeling you’ve got right now? The one that notices how shockingly early the sun…
I like Brassic but the reason it’s getting such glowing notices is depressing
Brassic (Sky One) feels like the sort of TV comedy drama they last made about 15 years ago but would…
When did English A-level become a science?
Now that my youngest has got her A-level grades, I’m finally free to say just how much I have loathed…
I agree with Jeremy Deller – the birth of acid house was a revolution that changed Britain
Jeremy Deller’s Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 (BBC4) began with some footage of kids queuing…
A gang of sheep rustlers is stalking the county – who will be the next target?
Though autumn is happily still some way off, we’ve already reached that stage in the shepherd’s calendar when full-grown lambs…
McDonald’s straws and the policies of moral panic
McDonald’s has bowed to public pressure and replaced plastic straws that you can recycle, with paper straws that you can’t…
The reason Gomorrah is one of the best series ever shown on TV is its fidelity to truth
My favourite epithet about my favourite TV series was the headline in a review by the Irish Times: ‘Gomorrah. Where…
God, I hate wasps!
Halfway up the back stairs on a ledge is the body of a wasp so big it’s either a queen…
Pure hagiography – the BBC’s Extinction Rebellion: Last Chance To Save The World?
I’m beginning to feel like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers: almost the last person on Earth who…
My daughter’s gone to Magaluf, and it’s hard not to worry
At the Leavers’ Ball held to mark our daughter’s last day at boarding school, there were only two topics of…
Kanye wipes the floor with David Letterman
My plan to cut the BBC out of my life entirely is working well. Apart from the occasional forgivable lapse…
Smart motorways are very stupid
‘An attempted improvement which actually makes things worse.’ The Germans have a name for this — Verschlimmbesserung — and I…
Girls will love it – and there’s just enough eye candy for boys: Big Little Lies reviewed
Six hundred and thirty years ago, Chaucer revealed in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ that what women really want is…
It would be weird if Gove hadn’t taken drugs
Cocaine is an abominable drug, by far the most hateful of all the various uppers and downers and psychoactives because…
Blast from the past
How many people do you think died at Chernobyl? 10,000? 50,000? 300,000? The correct answer, according to the never knowingly…
My medical treatment is sending me bonkers – and it’s no fun
If I’ve been incredibly rude to you or snappy or tearful lately, if I’ve taken offence where none was intended,…
Sunday night on the Beeb was an orgy of virtue-signalling and third-rate sport
After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they…
Gratitude lessons show Eton is losing its way
‘Repeat after me, gentlemen: “Thank you for not letting me into your Oxbridge college because I belong to the wrong…
Gloriously un-PC: Chris Lilley’s Swiftian, scabrous, gleefully misanthropic Lunatics reviewed
‘Unfunny, boring and utterly unrelenting,’ says the Guardian’s one-star review of Chris Lilley’s new sketch series Lunatics (Netflix). And if…
The savagery and death lurking within our beautiful countryside
This is the time of year when the English countryside reaches peak incredible: when we rural folk mentally pinch ourselves…
Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?
‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…
Are you ‘culture compliant’?
Here’s a quick quiz to jolly up your Easter. 1. Lucy Noble, artistic director of the Royal Albert Hall, thinks…
If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love Our Planet
If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love this latest masterpiece of the genre: Our Planet. The Netflix nature…
