Features
Braveheart banking
The RBS disaster has a distinctly Scottish flavour
An Anglican atheist
Richard Dawkins shows off his human side
Name of shame
The importance of not being Nigel
Missile morality
Our leaders should stop talking about ‘justice’ in Syria – honesty may be the best and only realistic policy
Lebanon’s dilemma
Beirut News that the Syrian regime has agreed to hand in its arsenal of chemical weapons is a great…
The ideal death show
I am in a yurt, talking about death. Everyone is seated in a circle, and I am the next-to-last person…
Notes on…Classic cruising
We arrive at the tiny Greek island of Sikinos on a blustery day, making landing rather difficult. Is there transport…
Obama’s wobbly warpath
The West does have a dog in the Syria fight. But it’s on the losing side of the losing side
A poll-watching President
Obama has realised that America has lost its appetite for war
Door into the dark
Seamus Heaney’s poetry from the other side of Northern Ireland’s divide
Italians for Maggie
The Circolo Culturale Margaret Thatcher, which wants to institute an Anglo-Saxon Tory party in Italy, has a plan
The revenge of Parliament
Today’s MPs are no longer scared of the whips. Instead, they are scared of their constituents. That’s a good thing
Hard to swallow
Hospital food isn’t a joke. It’s a scandal
Notes on…Sicily
It could be, in Sicily, there comes a time when you’ve had your fill of seaside calamari and cheap white…
Beware of the hawks
Supporters of intervention in Syria will be the first to desert Cameron when the going gets tough
Unspeakable persecution
Don’t expect the government to raise its voice for Syria’s Christians
Frontline battle
The charity that could make the public love social workers– and why many social workers don’t like it
Welcome to Ryanair Britain
Local councils, banks, railway companies and the taxman have all learned the art of ‘pirate pricing’
Letter from Somaliland
Ayan Mahamoud, one of the organisers of Hargeysa’s International Book Fair, has all the girly vulnerability of a factory-tested steel…
A novelist’s view
Do writers really need inspiring landscapes? Or the opposite?
Notes on…Rome
Leave Florence and Sienna to the aesthetes. Let the in-crowd do Naples and Palermo. For the amateur Italophile, Rome is…
Forget ‘militant’ atheists. Fight the real fanatics
It’s August, and you are a journalist stuck in the office without an idea in your head. What to write?…
The missing middle
The great stabilising force in our society is disappearing fast
The line to nowhere
The government’s high-speed rail plans will never be implemented
The Bo show
China’s fallen princeling has a new role to play: one he may not enjoy
