Features
Game changers
Have you been cheering for the excellent Johanna Konta at Wimbledon? Go, Jo! Or should that be Go, Yo? Johanna…
Free as a jailbird
Food programmes are having a strange effect on me: I watch them and feel nauseated. Masterchef, The Great British Bake…
Letter to my uncle (contd)
Dear Uncle James Thank you for your thought-provoking comments on my last letter (8 July). I accept that personality played…
‘Everyone’s out for Boris’
The Tory leadership contest is starting with an attempted assassination
A junior scandal
On the main allegations of collusion with Russia, there’s still no smoking gun
Cathar country
I once spent three months living in the Languedoc, writing my first novel. The highlight was the few days I…
Media culpa
A thread runs through several of the stories that have defined this turbulent summer: reporters have been shocked by the…
Survival of the sneakiest
Could there be a better metaphor for the corruption that now pervades all top-level sport than the use of motors…
Arms and the man
Meeting men used to be so easy. I don’t mean that in a Grindr sort of way. I just mean…
At death’s door
It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in Covent Garden and we are all learning how to kill ourselves. The venue…
Put out the fires
Few events have appalled London liberals so publicly as the surprise emergence of the ten MPs of the Democratic Unionist…
Down with declinism
Britain is a strong and wealthy nation. Let’s behave like one
Lessons in love and loss
Some of the time, most of the time, it’s tricky to believe in God. There’s just too much that’s sad…
Orchidelirium
The lady’s slipper orchid, Cypripedium calceolus, is both a beautiful and silly–looking plant. It is the strangest of our native…
Letter from a Corbynista
Dear Uncle James, Thank you for your note (‘Letter to a Corbynista’, June 24). Firstly, of course we’re still friends,…
Sharia for feminists
Is Islam inherently misogynistic? That old charge arose again after the Manchester bombing in May, with the suggestion that Salman…
Andy’s ace
Who will you cheer for if Andy Murray meets Roger Federer at Wimbledon? It’s not a straightforward question, at least…
When gossip was king
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Nigel Dempster, once the world’s best-known gossip columnist. For three…
A century of De Stijl
It starts as soon as I arrive. In Den Haag Centraal railway station, the kiosks, windows, lift shaft, piano and…
The Corbyn coalition
One of the most disappointing things about the general election for me was how few people must have read Nick…
The Britten Theatre
When friends from overseas with the slightest interest in music ask for recommendations about what to see in London, I…
An unholy alliance
Israel’s Channel 2 news station improbably made history last week by airing a brief interview with an obscure policy wonk…
Europe’s imploding right
If the British Conservative party is feeling stunned, having calamitously misread the public mood in a general election, then it…
The bigger, better society
The last housing scandal in Notting Hill brought down a Conservative government and transformed the social policy of Britain. Peter…
This uneasy dawn
The Tory party is having the wrong conversation. Whenever two or three Conservative MPs are gathered together, they discuss who…
