Melanie McDonagh

Melanie McDonagh is a leaderwriter for the Evening Standard and Spectator contributor. Irish, living in London.

The Lion’s Mane, the Firework and terrible jellyfish jokes: the year’s best children’s books

30 November 2024 9:00 am

Contemporary authors, including Rick Riordan, Kate di Camillo, Mark Forsyth and Michael Stavaric, share shelf space with welcome reprints, including the ever-terrifying Struwwelpeter

Assisted dying won’t work

30 November 2024 5:07 am

Well, the pro-choicers have got their way. In two years’ time, if Kim Leadbeater’s reassurances hold good, we’ll have the…

The Taoiseach will get more than he bargained for in Ireland’s snap election

28 November 2024 5:39 pm

The Irish general election happens on Friday. In times past, observers would be marking the rise of Sinn Fein; now…

Stimulating little exhibition: Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites reviewed

23 November 2024 9:00 am

Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites… there’s an obvious problem here: how do you represent one sense by another?…

The Wizard of Oz sequel that’s perfect for our gender-obsessed age

21 November 2024 4:07 pm

To not wholly rapturous reviews, the movie Wicked, the prequel to The Wizard of Oz, is released this week. Tragically,…

The great flaw in Labour’s assisted dying bill

12 November 2024 11:02 pm

Believe it or not, the most compelling argument against assisted dying today came from Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem…

Make pirates scary again

19 October 2024 9:00 am

If there’s one thing to bring out your inner Herod, it’s the twee tendency in younger children’s books. It’s at…

The slippery slope of assisted dying

17 October 2024 4:00 pm

Critics of the Assisted Dying Bill have been warning for a while that it would lead to a ‘slippery slope’.…

The Christian view of sex contains multitudes

12 October 2024 9:00 am

Lower Than the Angels (that is the condition of man, according to the psalmist and St Paul) is a book…

Dawn Butler’s bonkers black history poem

2 October 2024 7:15 pm

Oh. My. Lord. I’ve been looking at Dawn Butler’s spoken verse as presented by her on X and it’s difficult…

The sham of an assisted dying ‘citizen’s jury’

13 September 2024 11:41 pm

It is remarkable that the BBC decided to give the latest PR exercise in favour of assisted suicide a big…

Keep fun out of funerals

24 August 2024 9:00 am

There are two untraditional ways to take your leave of this world in Britain. The bleaker is the ‘direct cremation’…

The desecration of Canterbury cathedral

17 August 2024 2:28 am

According to canon 1220 of the Catholic church’s code of canon law, ‘all those responsible are to take care that…

A tribute to Ismail Kadare, a writer who really deserved a Nobel Prize

4 July 2024 1:05 am

Apart from Bob Dylan and Kazuo Ishiguro, it’s a fair bet that most people’s reaction to the Nobel prizewinners for…

What’s wrong with calling a female walker ‘sweetheart’?

19 June 2024 4:31 am

So, another place where men have to mind their language: on mountains. In an article in Scottish Mountaineer magazine by one…

Scotland’s religious collapse

8 June 2024 9:00 am

Last week, I had a drink with a Catholic priest friend who works with young people in custody. Inevitably, our…

Woman’s Hour has a diversity problem

29 May 2024 8:01 pm

On the bright side, Nuala McGovern isn’t Emma Barnett, she of the combative approach to broadcasting. The new presenter of Woman’s…

‘No mow May’ isn’t long enough

27 May 2024 4:00 pm

There’s one way of getting the look of the Chelsea Flower show winner, Ula Maria’s forest bathing garden, and that’s…

Why Gillian Keegan is right to scrap the free school cap

1 May 2024 8:31 pm

The other day a nice Albanian builder came round. He was in an upbeat mood because his son had been…

Why the public doesn’t support decriminalising abortion

9 April 2024 10:30 pm

Curious, isn’t it, how sentiment changes on a critical issue all of a sudden? Not so long ago, the prospect…

Irish voters have refused to erase the family

10 March 2024 7:33 pm

It’s not been a particularly good weekend for the political establishment in Ireland. Two constitutional changes have been rejected by…

Menopausal women shouldn’t be treated differently

22 February 2024 9:58 pm

Granted, I could be a beneficiary of the latest guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) about women…

How to get through Lent

15 February 2024 3:38 am

Well, it’s a pig of a coincidence to have Ash Wednesday coinciding with Valentine’s Day. So, at the start of…

Canterbury Cathedral’s ‘rave in the nave’ is indefensible

10 February 2024 4:14 am

It’s too late to get tickets for Canterbury Cathedral’s silent disco tonight – as with last night’s event, they sold…