Features
Riot chic
Last weekend, I got into a conversation with the son of an old friend. He’s a nice middle-class boy, mid-twenties,…
Goodwood
The South Downs cover 260 sq miles from Hampshire’s Itchen Valley to Eastbourne in East Sussex. Nestled near the southernmost…
‘I like making things’
Sir James Dyson would make a good therapist for anxious Brexiteers. Everything about him is comfortingly precise — his manner…
Trump’s eastern front
Kiev There is no lavatory paper to be found in government buildings in Kiev. Plan ahead, locals advise, if you…
Persistent buggers
The credit for decriminalising male homosexuality in 1967 — for those over 21 in England and Wales at least —…
Blatant not latent
It’s exactly 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised male homosexuality, received the Royal Assent on 27…
Diana the diva
Twenty years in August since Diana died. The anniversary is sad for me on many levels — she was definitely…
Is Macron’s vanity presidency already falling apart?
The French president’s embarrassing attempts to reinvent himself as the new Tony Blair are not working
Amsterdam Notebook
When my husband and I arrived in our adored Amsterdam on a sun-drenched schoolday afternoon — less than an hour…
Shropshire
I found the land of lost content last week, west of the Clee Hills in the Shropshire Housman wrote about,…
Test of time
I first walked into the Oval as a small boy in the early 1950s. My family home was in Brixton,…
Deus ex machina
Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook could be to its users what churches are to congregations: it could help them feel…
Must Colston fall?
Edward Colston, mega-rich philanthropist around the year 1700, is the nearest thing Bristol has to a patron saint. The largest…
It’s got to be perfect
When I order a cup of tea in Costa, the barista says: ‘Perfect!’ I ask for tap water in a…
Poor conduct
Last weekend Daniel Barenboim brought the Staatskapelle Berlin to perform at the BBC Proms for a cycle of Elgar’s symphonies.…
Kids Company faces the music
It was surreal to sit in the Donmar Warehouse and watch Committee, a musical based on the investigation into the…
Madness in the Med
Humanitarian efforts are creating an even greater migrant crisis
Southwold Sailors’ Reading Room
The Southwold Sailors’ Reading Room is a gorgeous bit of Inside. Like any coastal town, Southwold has an awful lot…
Mixed blessings
Japan is the only developed country where people openly espouse two distinct and incompatible religions at the same time —…
The view from Germany
Frankfurt ‘This is not about punishing Great Britain,’ declared Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s interim foreign secretary, on his recent visit to…
The lesson of Liu Xiaobo
Eight years into his 11-year prison term, Liu Xiaobo, China’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner, is dying. He is the…
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
