Features
How to speak London
Cockney is dead, but so is the King’s English. Long live Standard Southern British English. The Cockney Barbara Windsor yelling…
Any protest which threatens the Cenotaph is a travesty
Every year I lay a wreath a week early, because Blyth, my nearest town, was a submarine port. Submariners were…
The overlooked genius of Ronald Firbank
This week English Heritage has put up a blue plaque to the novelist Ronald Firbank, and I know, from 40…
We needed a Covid inquiry – but this isn’t it
What is the point of the Covid Inquiry? It should be to establish which parts of the government’s pandemic response…
Why Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hamas will not succeed
After three weeks of airstrikes, Israel has begun its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. The goal, in the words…
‘Comedy is much more important than I thought’: John Cleese on the press, his new talk show and the power of Fawlty Towers
John Cleese enjoys tough questions. He’s currently touring America with An Evening with the Late John Cleese, and a substantial…
Can the killing of innocent civilians ever be justified?
Israel has made the first, rather tentative, moves of its ground operation against Hamas – but there’s nothing tentative about…
Help! I’m on a dating blacklist
There’s a online blacklist of men you should avoid dating and I’m on it. I discovered this over the summer…
‘Childhood has been rewired’: Professor Jonathan Haidt on how smartphones are damaging a generation
Something strange is happening with teenagers’ mental health. In Britain, the US, Australia and beyond, the same trend can be…
Identity Crisis: why doesn’t the West know who to back in the Israel-Hamas war?
When two planes flew into the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, the world stood in solidarity with the…
A beginner’s guide to witchcraft
Next year, Exeter University will offer an MA in Magic and Occult Science: the first of its kind in a…
The sad death of the pony ride
Pony rides were once a staple of every village, church and primary-school fête. A brusque, horsey mother would swing you…
Mind games: why AI must be regulated
During my time in No. 10 as one of Dominic Cummings’s ‘weirdos and misfits’, my team would often speak with…
Political Islam now commands the Middle East
No sane American president takes office hoping for war. Woodrow Wilson, a 56-year-old Princeton academic, said it would be ‘the…
Netanyahu has failed Israel
Jerusalem Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza is rapidly evolving into a war with all of Iran’s proxies…
Europe needs to step up on Ukraine
Vasyl, a burly, tattooed infantry commander who lost a leg to a Russian mine on the eastern front, sits swinging…
Ukraine’s fight has been eclipsed by the ‘Other War’
The first indication that this was a literary festival like no other came with the request to provide ‘proof of…
The real reason for falling birth rates
No nation in history is known to have emerged from the grip of long-term low birth rates. This sobering reality…
The World at War is the greatest documentary series ever made
To present a TV history documentary these days, one must first have access to the full Angels and Bermans dressing-up…
How to win five Nobel prizes in literature
‘Hi Jacques,’ I say as the publisher of Fitzcarraldo Editions appears on my Zoom screen with his Franz Hals facial…
