Features
Don’t grouse about grouse
The vast Bubye Valley Conservancy in southern Zimbabwe is slightly larger than County Durham, as well as much hotter and…
Olympic Notebook
How strange it is to be watching the Olympic Games on television. No wonder people have such rum ideas of…
Heads in the cloud
Ask me what I had for lunch yesterday and I couldn’t tell you. Names disappear as swiftly as smoke.-Birthdays, capital…
Trump holds the aces
Last week, the New York Times ran the page one headline ‘Pence Supports Ryan, Showing GOP Turmoil.’ There was turmoil…
The rainbow election
Cape Town South Africa has just seen her most encouraging election results ever. The general election of April 1994, which…
Straight talking
Thirty years ago this week, Queen performed what would turn out to be their last gig, at Knebworth. Their penultimate…
In defence of dinner parties
In or out? Almost two months on and I’m afraid the great debate shows no sign of abating, certainly not…
The first favela
Where are you going?’ demanded the boy on the wall. A walkie-talkie clipped to his denim shorts crackled, but there…
The first favela
Where are you going?’ demanded the boy on the wall. A walkie-talkie clipped to his denim shorts crackled, but there…
Brexit means sovereignty
We know what people voted against,’ say half-clever pundits, ‘but it’s far from clear what they voted for.’ Actually, it’s…
We are not a hateful nation
Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. Barely a day passes without some policeman…
Zero tolerance, zero sanity
THE REAL HATE CRIME SCANDAL For 20 months, I stood accused of a hate crime: homophobically motivated common assault. The…
Clueless in Syria
The other day I was speaking to a Kurdish journalist who was held in Isis captivity for ten months. He…
Blood and soil
A declaration of nationality is a profound statement. To say ‘I am British’ suggests that somehow I am composed of…
My wild success
I’ve just tripped over the damned hedgehog for the second time in as many days. He has retreated into the…
Munich notebook
It has been a strange week in Munich; a week of deceptively cool mornings, afternoons hot enough to fry eggs…
Skye
Glamour. It’s Marcello Mastroianni drinking negronis on the Via Veneto; it’s Audrey Hepburn, George Clooney, Sinatra on the Vegas Strip…
Skye
Glamour. It’s Marcello Mastroianni drinking negronis on the Via Veneto; it’s Audrey Hepburn, George Clooney, Sinatra on the Vegas Strip…
What a shower
The fact that we get sun when we expect hail and hail when we expect sun provides those of us…
Europe’s summer of terror
How is your Merkelsommer going? For now, Britain seems to be missing the worst. True, a couple of men of…
Mass murder
On Tuesday morning, an 85-year-old man was forced to his knees while his throat was slit by Islamic fanatics. The…
Trump ♥ Putin
Spy novels and James Bond movies; post-war Vienna and East Berlin; Manchurian candidates and Third Men. The pop culture of…
My pedigree chum
The backlash has been brutal, unforgiving and, in common with the left’s reactions to so many things, almost hysterical in…
Enemies of history
At the start of the 21st century, no one felt the need to reach for studies of ‘third-period’ communism to…
A few good books
It is a truth universally acknowledged that whenever ITV or the BBC decides — the latter usually with charter renewal…
