Features
Putin’s purge of his top generals
In the past month, Vladimir Putin has had five top generals arrested on corruption charges. More are likely to follow…
Could Ozempic bankrupt the NHS?
The NHS spends around £6.5 billion every year treating obesity. People who are overweight cost the health service twice as…
Hell is a rented garden
For the past few years, I have been a joyful Chelsea Flower Show attendee. Every May, my phone’s photo album…
The moon matters to China
China’s Chang’e-6 moon mission was launched on 3 May. It reached lunar orbit a few days later and began waiting…
Assassination attempts, executions and volleyball: a history of Horse Guards
Will they never learn? The signs are very clear: ‘Beware! Horses may kick or bite.’ Yet last week a woman…
Anti-Semitism has returned to French politics
New Caledonia is an archipelago in the South Pacific not far from Australia. James Cook discovered it in 1774, but,…
Why is the government making it harder to get an au pair?
You will have heard, I am sure, of the Conservatives’ recent largesse towards working parents, as their ‘free’ childcare policy…
How to quit like the Japanese
Tokyo For many, the idea of quitting a job they hate, of walking into their boss’s office and telling him…
The deluge: Rishi Sunak’s election gamble
‘Only a Conservative government, led by me, will not put our hard-earned economic stability at risk,’ said Rishi Sunak as…
What happened to the electric car revolution?
China is often characterised as a copycat when it comes to industry and technology but in one way it has…
In Kharkiv, culture is a form of defence
Kharkiv It was a strange feeling to walk alone through eerie corridors in the basement of the Kharkiv Opera Theatre…
South Africa’s migrant crisis
Johannesburg It’s called the ‘Reverse Jive’, retracing your steps to where your journey began, and you’ll hear it talked about…
The unbeatable glory of a doner kebab
Ionce shared a bed with a doner kebab. I’d hungrily joined a 3 a.m. queue for much needed post-pub sustenance,…
The Church of England’s volunteering crisis
John Betjeman knew that a church cannot run on prayers alone. ‘Let’s praise the man who goes to light the…
All boys should own a Swiss Army knife
Last week, Carl Elsener of Victorinox, makers of the Swiss Army knife (all other manufacturers must refer to their products…
Gangs of Tehran: how Iran takes out its enemies abroad
‘It was Friday afternoon, around 2.45. I came out of the house and was going towards the car on the…
Shabana Mahmood: The disgraceful treatment of Kate Forbes
It was like a scene from the Blair government: a minister admits inmates are being released before their sentence ends,…
Who will Trump pick for his running mate?
We are in the fifth week of Donald Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial and the real scandal is that it’s all…
No tips please, we’re British
I hate tipping, not because I am intrinsically mean but because of the anxiety it induces. You pitch up at…
Ahmad Massoud: ‘I’m 100% sure I can topple the Taliban’
It’s fighting season in Afghanistan again. When the Americans were in charge, after the poppy fields had been harvested in…
The power of restorative justice
In a week when the Chief Inspector of Prisons published an Urgent Notification detailing the horrors of HMP Wandsworth, I…
Tom Cruise and the art of falconry
Last week, the Hollywood team making the latest Mission Impossible film was desperate to clear Trafalgar Square of its superabundant…
How universities raised a new generation of activists
It was only a matter of time before America’s student protests spread to the UK. In Oxford, tents have been…
Bugs, biscuits, trench foot: from the front line of the uni protests
On the grass in front of UCL’s main building, on Sunday night, there were about 30 tents and the portico…
