No sacred cows
Sweet dreams are made of this
As I’ve got older my tastes have generally become less refined. During my youth I dutifully slogged through Kafka, Camus…
How to save the Oscars
This Sunday’s Academy Awards will be a litmus test of whether Hollywood can uncouple itself from the political agenda of…
Free speech, Facebook and me
By the time you read this the new draft of the Online Safety Bill should be on the DCMS website.…
My three straight weeks of saintliness
I’m currently standing at the top of Brownie Point Mountain, having spent the past two weeks looking after our three…
Mushrooms and missiles
Vladimir Putin’s decision on Sunday to put his ‘deterrence forces’ – code for nuclear weapons – in a high state…
Mexico is no country for journalists
I’m writing this on my last day in Mexico City, having accompanied my 18-year-old daughter here for the first week…
The whine of the Ancient Mariner
I was a bit irritated by all the millennials saying the Superbowl half-time show made them feel old. The 15-minute…
The day Boris tried to bribe me
It’s not every day that a future prime minister offers you a bribe, but that’s what happened to me 38…
Where’s my trigger warning?
Last week brought the news that some universities have attached more ‘trigger warnings’ to certain books, concerned that students may…
Highway to hell
I did a speed awareness course on Monday. For the uninitiated, you have the option of doing one of these…
Sceptic shock
I got Covid a couple of weeks ago. Second time for me, which was annoying because I’d told Caroline that…
Doom-mongers can be funny too
I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Don’t Look Up, the new satirical film on Netflix. It’s about a couple of…
Where are all the Turners in the Turner Contemporary?
I learnt a horrible new word during the holidays: Twixmas. It refers to the 27-30 December period and has its…
Some (tentative) reasons to be cheerful
Someone sent me a job advert recently for a Junior Research Fellowship at Queen’s College, Oxford. It states: ‘The Queen’s…
Let’s not become Scotland
The Law Commission has published a string of recommendations following its recent consultation on changes to hate-crime laws in England…
Why punish a scientist for defending science?
As a defender of free speech, I sometimes feel like a man falling through a collapsing building. Just when you…
Think about the children
When Caroline and I got married in 2001, having four kids was not only fashionable, it was the socially responsible…
The day I became a prize contrarian
Something rather unusual happened to me a few weeks ago: I was shortlisted for a prize. Not the GQ Men…
Everybody expects the moral Inquisition
Last week, the former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan revealed that he’d been accused by another cricketer — Azeem Rafiq…
Sky’s the limit
When I promised my 13-year-old son, Charlie, that we would go to as many QPR games as possible in 2021-22…
Why lockdown sceptics lost the argument
I’m optimistic that the government won’t implement ‘Plan B’, let alone impose another lockdown — but not because sceptics like…
Virtue signalling is really status signalling
A £19,000-a-year London day school was in the news this week because it has started instructing its pupils about ‘white…
Rhodes to nowhere
I’m sympathetic to Oliver Dowden’s formula for defusing culture-war disputes about statues of controversial historic figures: ‘retain and explain’. That…
My nightmare weekend of deer and dogs
Caroline and I are just back from a weekend break in Scotland and, nice though it was, I hadn’t realised…
A love-late relationship
‘Dad, why is it that whenever we go anywhere, we’re always running to catch a train?’ asked Charlie, my 13-year-old.…
