Features
Playful, adorable – and with a real nose for trouble: In praise of the beagle
Harvey’s finest moment, he would tell you, was the chicken kiev. I’d just made the garlic butter and inserted it…
East vs West: the new battle for Europe
The occasion was a central European conference on the subversive disinformation campaigns of Putin’s Russia (which, incidentally, are real, subtle,…
This is Ukip’s Britain. The rest of us just live in it
The continuing saga of Henry Bolton’s notional leadership of Ukip continues to amaze and amuse and appal in equal measure.…
A day of reckoning is coming for America’s muddled Middle East policies
Beirut ‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense,’ said Alice. ‘Nothing would be what it…
The #MeToo fury has spilled over into a feminist war
The #MeToo movement began, I thought, primarily to allow women to speak out about harassment from men, which they had…
Momentum isn’t hard left. It’s a theatrical cult
Hard left, my arse. Sorry to be vulgar, but surely that’s how Jim Royle, couch-potato patriarch of that glorious sitcom…
Why I’ve been written out of Anthony Powell’s history
You’re in the index, but not in the book. This ghostly sensation has been my experience since 1990 after commissioning…
From a war-zone A&E to hellhole wards, my dispiriting week in an NHS hospital
I am in a good position to report from the NHS frontline, having been in hospital with pneumonia for just…
The salty charms of Leigh-on-Sea
I have fallen in love with the c2c, a whisker of a train that is never delayed. It operates between…
Revealed – the truth about plastic
Has an albatross ever wielded so much influence? The bewildered chick who regurgitated a plastic bag in front of Sir…
What do proper communists really think of Corbyn?
Last year, more than 15,000 communists gathered in the Russian seaside town of Sochi for a week-long commemoration of the…
Amazing grace
Last week, Peregbakumo Oyawerikumo, aka ‘The Master’, was finally caught and shot by the Nigerian army. Oyawerikumo and his Egbesu…
Real men bathe together
With my friend Maurice, I have long frequented the Ironmonger Row baths behind Moorfields Eye Hospital. As married men, we…
The curious star appeal of Jordan Peterson
Last Sunday night a capacity crowd of mainly young people packed into the Emmanuel Centre in London. Those who couldn’t…
Parole is unfair and unworkable. Let’s abolish it
The furore over the parole granted to John Worboys, the rapist taxi driver, misses the point entirely — that the…
Why the sleepy old CoE is just a greedy, moneygrubbing property tycoon
Holy smoke! The sleepy old Church of England is a greedy, money-grubbing property tycoon. This month, it emerged that since…
Padel power! But will this crazy new sport ever be a hit?
When we arrived, we discovered that our villa had a padel court. Few of us had seen one before and…
Welcome to the age of the digital inquisition
A friend of mine at university had a rule: he didn’t want anything to appear online that might ruin a…
Building artificial beauty spots to protect nests is a bird-brained idea
While walking or riding on the beautiful heathland near my home, I have noticed a growing number of signs telling…
Girl power! Educating girls can fix the world’s problems
The world is blessed with a brilliant and industrious UN secretary-general, and it was certainly worth tuning in last week…
For Putin, the World Cup is not about football but global respect
Authoritarian regimes love grand international sporting events. There’s something about the mass regimentation, the set-piece spectacle, the old-fashioned idea of…
Patients like being told they need an operation. It doesn’t mean they do
In George Bernard Shaw’s play The Doctor’s Dilemma, written early last century, the knife-happy surgeon invents a nut-shaped abdominal organ,…
Britain’s real-life canals are as mystical and marvellous as Philip Pullman’s books
Philip Pullman’s latest missal, La Belle Sauvage, once again features the boat-dwelling Gyptians. Rough and honourable, they emerge from the…
The Iranian rebellion the world wants to ignore
If there is one lesson the world should have learned from Iran’s ‘Green Revolution’ of 2009 and the so-called Arab…
Wilfred Owen’s troubling obsession with young boys
This year is the centenary of the Armistice to end what Siegfried Sassoon called ‘the world’s worst wound’: the first…
