Features
Could your 50p coin be worth much more?
‘I have not found anybody yet who has a good word to say for the new coin,’ Sir Douglas Glover…
‘Happy Friday!’: resist the tyranny of faux niceness
Five people I never met wished me a Happy Friday last Friday by email. You can pretty much be wished…
‘I bet there are loads of women who find Farage sexy’: the writers of Industry on putting politics on screen
No TV show better encapsulates the nexus between money and power than Industry. The HBO drama sees investment bankers screwing,…
‘It’s a Faustian pact’: Rachel Reeves is giving bankers what they want
The Epstein files lift the curtain on how power is exercised and influence traded by our financial elite. It is…
A beginner’s guide to Britain’s right-wing parties
The crowded market place emerging on Britain’s right is bewildering. Nigel Farage and Reform UK appeared to have successfully colonised…
Strewth! Australian culture is taking over Britain
Catherine and Heathcliff. These are surely roles that every attractive British actor should aspire to. Why mope between auditions for…
My sister Ghislaine became a prop in the theatre of global online outrage
My family name has become a byword for scandal. My father Robert went from press baron to tabloid monster within…
Inside the daring plan to reclaim the Chagos Islands
Peros Banhos on the Chagos archipelago looks like your basic tropical island paradise: turquoise waters and golden sands, waves lapping…
‘More than half our squad were executed’: Inside Russia’s rotten army
The Russians are on the warpath – and Europe is Vladimir Putin’s next target. That was Sir Keir Starmer’s alarming…
How to listen for alien life
For more than 60 years, scientists have been on the stealthiest stakeout in history. Using state-of-the-art listening devices, they’ve tapped…
‘It was making me think like a Latin American dictator’: why my moustache had to go
Iloved my moustache. Unfortunately, my fondness for it seemed inversely proportionate to its popularity among my peers. After much unsolicited…
The real reason VAR has ruined football
The two main harms of government regulation, to be balanced against any benefits, are cost and delay. But there is…
Just how bad are Nato’s armies?
Given the relative sizes of their economies, one might conclude that Russia would quake before the military might of Europe’s…
‘J.D. Vance was right’: Is Europe finally waking up?
Munich, Germany The organisers of the Munich security conference weren’t subtle. A large statue of an elephant stood in one…
The truth about Britain’s hollowed-out armed forces
When Keir Starmer was told his pledge to raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP in the next…
All aboard the last bus out of Mousehole
It was lucky that the bus was behind schedule – mainly because the driver had stepped out to take his…
Who would Inspector Rebus support in the Scottish Premiership?
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme asks me to champion a favourite book and I choose Muriel Spark’s The Prime of…
Revealed: David Lammy’s curious relationship with Guyanese Big Oil
Better not tell Ed Miliband, but in spring 2022 his then shadow cabinet colleague, David Lammy, appears to have struck…
Europeans love offal – why don’t we?
The British used to love offal but now we tend to be a bit wimpy about it, unlike the French…
The gangs terrifying the countryside
Sergeant Rob Goacher was on patrol recently when the radio crackled with a tip-off. Two men were hare coursing –…
The horror of the male wig
Horrible injuries are commonplace in boxing but none, surely, has been quite so devastating as that sustained by the heavyweight…
‘Authority is like virginity. Once it’s gone, it’s gone’: Inside Keir Starmer’s downfall
Years ago, Peter Mandelson shared a key lesson with his protégé Morgan McSweeney. Reminiscing about his involvement in Labour’s 1987…
How Jeff Bezos destroyed the Washington Post
The debacle of the Washington Post’s hara-kiri last week dispatched the myth that a tech billionaire could save journalism. Jeff…
Apart from Mandelson, who is Labour’s biggest freebie lover?
Keir Starmer is Labour’s king of freebies. He promised to clean up politics, but has accepted more free stuff than…
‘Yes, it’s that bad’: inside Oxford’s Saïd Business School
How do you get into the University of Oxford? It is a question asked by thousands of young people every…
