Features
Destitute Britain
I became aware that there was real destitution in modern Britain five years ago. Destitution, as I see it, arises…
The return of Lady Muck
My sainted mum was of untarnished working-class blood — she worked, variously, as a cleaner, factory hand and shop assistant…
The idiot box
How to sum up David Frost? The lazy writer’s friend, aka Wikipedia, calls him ‘an English journalist, comedian, writer, media…
A model life
This season, as London fashion week was starting, Vogue posted a video following the new model of the moment Kaia…
Greece Notebook
I have come to Greece in search of sanity over Brexit. Ostensibly it is a symposium to discuss relations between…
Lewes
Autumn is upon us, and the streets are full of families in fancy dress. People of all ages are dressing…
Cruise ship pianists
When Crystal Cruises invited me to join their flagship as the guest classical pianist for a springtime voyage around the…
Pregnant silence
Brian Sewell once wrote an article about abortion headlined: ‘Women, the killers in our midst.’ He got an awful lot…
Dangerous liaisons
Lothario, Don Juan, philanderer, ‘naughty’, ‘plays away’ — all terms for men who have an overwhelming drive to seduce scores…
One man rules
Optimists speculate that Xi Jinping’s power accumulation is the prelude to a burst of liberalising reform in his second five-year…
Lost in translation
If Michel Barnier and David Davis, in their regular dialogue of the deaf, seem to be inhabiting different mental universes,…
No deal is a good deal
So Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker enjoyed a ‘broad and constructive exchange’ during their working dinner in Brussels. Last time…
Cult classic
In Dan Brown’s new thriller, Origin, we are introduced to the Catholic church’s sinister far-right rival — a paranoid worldwide…
Papa Xi
The cult of personality behind China’s president
Trains in Spain
The first railway line in Spain, from Barcelona to Mataro a few miles up the coast towards the French border,…
Kill your friendships
Pals are a luxury, not a necessity
Story of the hurricane
The Great Storm of 1987 doesn’t have a name like those hurricanes that devastate the Caribbean and the United States…
Tech vs Trump
In the 1962 Japanese sci-fi classic King Kong vs Godzilla, the two giant monsters fight to a stalemate atop Mount…
Truth in fiction
Robert Harris on fake facts, his new novel – and why totalitarianism is in the air again
The wisdom of weirdos
It was World Mental Health Day this week — and it drove me mad. I don’t have ‘mental illness’. I…
Learn to navigate the elite’s new PC-speak – or else
Since the EU referendum result last June our nation has been divided: not only by the vote but also by…
Sentences without end
My first sight of Colin was as a lanky manifestation lying on a desk in the Dartmoor prison education department…
Say nothing
To my embarrassment, ever since my novel We Need to Talk About Kevin was published in 2003, I’ve been a…
Imran’s biggest test
It’s been a long journey for Imran Khan. He founded his political party, PTI (Pakistan Movement for Justice), in 1996,…
The shootings prove…
It is terribly important whenever an atrocity occurs to scour the internet for information — however specious — that proves…
