No exaggeration: Hyperbole makes words worthless
Saturday night, a guest commentator on Sky News sputtered that Donald Trump has ‘normalised white supremacy’. Once the American President…
Adversity is the new diversity – and it disadvantages everyone
To clear up any confusion, American SATs are closer to A-levels than to British primary-school SATs. In my day, this…
Feminism has succeeded – so why don’t we call it quits?
You would think that the British Film Institute’s sponsorship of a month-long festival celebrating some of the most memorable female…
We’re all self-haters now
As an American coming of age at the fag end of the 1960s, I celebrated self-loathing. Everything about the United…
Dear Remainer parliament: you won. Now revoke Article 50 – if you dare
Dear Remainer parliament. Although we’re the voters who spurned the petition for this very course of action, we the undersigned…
Imagine the uproar if Remain had won, but MPs then made Britain leave
Sometimes it’s worth addressing what didn’t happen. For one exasperating aspect of appearing on television news is leaving the studio…
If you forgive the IRA, then you must forgive the Parachute Regiment too
In my 2010 short story ‘Prepositions’, a woman has lost her husband not in 9/11 but on 9/11 — when…
Why I hate ‘the n-word’
One of the depressing aspects of writing a column attuned to social hypocrisy is so rarely running short of new…
![Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who is facing calls to resign after admitting he had worn blackface [WIN McNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2019/02/Ralph_Northam.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
Without forgiveness, we’re all doomed
Over Christmas, I digitised slides from my twenties. In many an unidentified photograph, I didn’t recognise the scene. Where was…
Why are we allowing ourselves to be held to ransom by has-been Irish militants?
When politics goes round in circles, the columnist inevitably revisits issues that would have been sorted if only everyone read…
Demography has become the biggest story on the planet
One of my vanities is that all my novels are different. Yet one astute journalist identified a universal thread: ‘Too…
Why do authors have to be ‘moral’? Because their publishing contracts tell them so
Suppose you’re a writer with a self-destructive proclivity for sticking your neck out. Would you sign a book contract that…
Why flee France?
Pitching your tent for weeks on end in the cold and mud, with no power or plumbing. Running in a…
You can’t possibly hate cyclists more than they hate each other
I’ve cycled for primary transportation for 53 years. Accordingly, I’m not naive about the degree of resentment — nay, loathing…
Will racial blending undermine identity politics? Let’s hope so
Behold, the most incendiary statistic in America: the Census Bureau’s projection of when whites will become a minority in what…
Jazz is dominated by men. So what?
I’d recommend any aspiring writer to marry a jazz drummer. It’s done wonders for my powers of concentration. If I…
Trump is right about many things, which is why he must be stopped
At my lecture in Sheffield last week, the final question in an otherwise temperate Q&A was antagonistic. My last Spectator…
The march of the migrants poses a dilemma for America
Trump has hinted that Democrats may have been secretly funding the ‘caravan’ of more than 7,000 Honduran immigrants trooping towards…
In defence of women (and why I ain’t no little bird)
Following Christine Blasey Ford’s Senate testimony about being sexually assaulted by the US Supreme Court nominee when he was 17,…
Why are men being such wusses over #MeToo?
‘There are two sides to every story’ is an aphorism you don’t hear often lately. Ask anyone amidst a family…
It’s not transphobic to question transgenderism
This column is not in my interest. But then, not for the first time. I cannot count the conversations conducted…
Millennials aren’t taking offence. They’re hunting for victims
In a recent column, I vowed to return to a point made in passing. To refresh your memory, the American…
Identity politics are – by definition – racist
To mark last weekend’s one-year anniversary of the violent right-wing demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, a meagre two dozen card-carrying white…
No apology is ever enough for the digital mob
Promoting physical fitness, the left has developed a bracing set of competitive callisthenics. Participants vie over who can complete a…
In the end, the Remainers will win. The powerful always do
Before the referendum, I predicted behind closed doors that even if Leave improbably prevailed, Britain’s political establishment would ensure that…
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