Features
Why are we so suspicious of magpies?
I started counting magpies during my brief, doomed time as a history teacher. Trudging in every morning, the grim prospect…
The art of owning up
Though Rebecca Culley is obviously a wrong ’un – having stolen £90,000 from her dear old gramps while pretending to…
Would you pay £65 for toothpaste?
Time was, you didn’t look forward to going to the dentist. Even for routine stuff, your highest aspiration would be…
How the hyphen turned political
When Buckingham Palace announced that its errant prince, Andrew, would be known as boring old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, some surprise…
The catastrophic dumbing down of German education
German teachers are a privileged species. Most of us enjoy the status of a Beamter, a tenured civil servant. We…
Ukraine is on the verge of political collapse
Defeat, political implosion and civil war – those are the jeopardies that Volodymyr Zelensky faces as Ukraine heads into the…
Are we finally about to crack fusion energy?
Imagine dropping a pea-sized capsule through a spherical chamber and hitting it with a colossal bolt of laser energy as…
Britain’s national security must not be sacrificed to net zero
Those who, like myself, experienced life behind the Iron Curtain understand instinctively that centrally planned economies beholden to an ideology…
It’s time to dispose of the Budget
Denis Healey’s ‘caretaker Budget’ on 3 April 1979 is an odd focus for Labour nostalgia. It came a week after…
My teenage brush with a micropenis
Like Adolf Hitler, I have been involved in a Channel 4 documentary about penises. I also share a love for…
The greatest threat to the economy? The Employment Rights Bill
On Monday night, former England manager Gareth Southgate joined MPs and philanthropists for an event in Westminster described as ‘the…
What Andrew’s Norfolk exile will look like
When Russian dissidents were bundled off into exile under the tsars, they were sent to Siberia, the ‘prison without a…
The rise of the on-the-day party drop-out
A new drinks-party-shirking method has taken hold in British society. I call it ‘Lastminute.non’. Previously, the way of not going…
The army is too woke for war
Last month, in a two-page letter to colonels of corps and regiments, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General…
America thinks Britain is finished
‘What’s missing?’ the tech titan Peter Thiel asks me, over lunch on the hummingbird-infested patio of his house in the…
How to fix the BBC
Assuming the BBC is still in existence by the time you read this, the scale of the task facing the…
Revealed: the bias of the BBC News app
The most influential person in British media is not Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere – it’s the editor who pushes…
How to get Britain eating healthily again
Another week, another government offensive against childhood obesity. This time it’s a fresh round of pleas for new levies on…
How Browns lost the battle of the brasseries
Last month, the founder of the Browns restaurant chain was charged with killing his mother. Shocking news, but it feels…
Britain’s cities are descending into a San Francisco-style nightmare
One morning a few months ago I was walking past St James’s Park station when a dishevelled man with his…
The inconvenient truth about cannabis and mental illness
Mash’s older brother was the same age as Anthony Williams when he slaughtered a stranger in a brutal and random…
China is holding the West to ransom over rare earths
China’s naked weaponisation of rare earths brings to mind Mao Zedong’s ‘four pests’ campaign, the old tyrant’s fanatical effort to…
Gilded age: the lessons from Trump’s second term
Washington, D.C. When John Swinney, the SNP leader, and Peter Mandelson visited Donald Trump in the Oval Office a few…
Is Zack Polanski our Zohran Mamdani?
Like Zohran Mamdani in New York, Zack Polanski offers the thrill of cost-free rebellion. Mamdani leapt to prominence at the…
Save England’s apples!
On a grey autumn morning, the apples in the National Fruit Collection look vivid. They pile up in pyramids of…
