Melanie McDonagh

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

Ottolenghi’s tomato and pomegranate salad

Yotam Ottolenghi: the Saatchi brothers of vegetable PR

27 September 2014 8:00 am

It would be a mistake to treat Plenty More, the new cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi, merely as a collection of…

Churchgoing is good for you (even if you don’t believe in God)

21 June 2014 8:00 am

And that’s true whether or not you believe in God

‘Religieuses’ (from William and Suzue Curley’s Patisserie)

Recipe for a modern baker: first, move to Hoxton

21 June 2014 8:00 am

If I were the kind of person who invited people to come and have a bite to eat that very…

The best new children's books

7 June 2014 9:00 am

A children’s author and illustrator, Jonathan Emmet, created a stir recently by saying that women are effectively gatekeepers of children’s…

antisuffrage-poster

Did most women want the vote?

10 May 2014 9:00 am

The suffragettes’ opponents deserve to be remembered sympathetically

Paris

15 March 2014 9:00 am

No city really multitasks like Paris, shorthand for romance, culture, fashion, gastronomy and the kind of street life you find…

Secrets of Candleford: the real Flora Thompson

1 March 2014 9:00 am

Melanie McDonagh on Flora Thompson, whose revealing account of rural Oxfordshire life at the turn of the 19th century became a literary classic

Forgive me, Father

8 February 2014 9:00 am

What Catholics really talk about in the confession box

François Hollande - all the president's women

18 January 2014 9:00 am

Hollande’s affair demonstrates that the French are becoming more puritanical about monogamy

How we lost the seasons

4 January 2014 9:00 am

... for tomorrow traditional seasonal rituals may just be ghostly memories of a vanished world, says Melanie McDonagh

The best children's books for Christmas

30 November 2013 9:00 am

Animal stories for children are always tricky; as J.R.R. Tolkien observed in his essay on fairy stories, you can end…

The man who made it OK to talk about immigration

16 November 2013 9:00 am

How Professor Paul Collier has bypassed the liberal taboo on discussing immigration

Helen Fielding has lost her touch

19 October 2013 9:00 am

To understand quite how disgruntled the reviews of the latest Bridget Jones diaries have been, you have to recall quite…

Less sex please, we're British

12 October 2013 9:00 am

From Bridget Jones to prime-time telly, porn culture is now mainstream

Do women want what they say they want?

28 September 2013 9:00 am

What do women want? You might have thought the Wife of Bath had got this one sorted, but Daniel Bergner…

Why G.K. Chesterton shouldn’t be made a saint

24 August 2013 9:00 am

G.K. Chesterton was a great journalist, not an angel

Sorry – the Vikings really were that bad

10 August 2013 9:00 am

Forget that guff about peaceful farmers with an interest in travel

The Modern Peasant, by JoJo Tulloch - review

10 August 2013 9:00 am

You know that something’s afoot when Lakeland says so. Lakeland is the kitchenware company which has more of a finger…

Philip Bobbitt on Machiavelli, Obama and David Cameron

6 July 2013 9:00 am

Few of today’s statesmen, says Philip Bobbitt, deserve comparison with the ‘seriously ethical’ author of The Prince