World
Eighty years on, Smokey Bear has aged like a fine oak
On a muggy mid-morning in early August, I arrived at the Berks County (Pennsylvania) Heritage Center to celebrate the birthday…
Mick Lynch blasted for ‘bonkers’ pro-Palestine comments
To the Trades Union Congress conference, where Mick Lynch is once again at the centre of political controversy. The RMT…
The return of CRT TVs
Cathode-ray televisions — the thick, “fat” CRT TVs of my youth — were dead. You couldn’t find them in secondhand…
Falling in love with Montana
“You have a big mountain to climb!” is not the sort of text you eagerly await from your girlfriend’s father.…
The real reason the Treasury can’t find the fiscal ‘black hole’
The Chancellor was so shocked when she received the briefings from Treasury officials that she had no choice but to…
This report is a damning indictment of the NHS
Lord Darzi had only nine weeks to conduct his investigation into and assessment of the National Health Service. But this…
The vision behind Woolsery
At first glance, it looks like any other sleepy village in southwest England. A medieval church and manor house face…
Rwanda to Uganda: a cross-border quest
The shelves of my father’s study-cum-Tottenham Hotspur shrine, stacked with leatherbound match day programs and soccer players’ autobiographies, belie his…
Culling cookbooks
How do you choose ten cookbooks out of more than a hundred collected over sixty years? With difficulty. After my…
In praise of Halloween food
If you’re hesitant to ask someone if they are American or Canadian — the latter are often offended to be…
Kombucha future: my scoby is taking over my life
I once read the back cover of a book with a brilliant premise: a Silicon Valley wage-slave with a dull,…
Prosecco goes posh
Compromises are odious. They reek of disappointments both large and small, when no one really gets his way — there’s…
Shaking up the mojito
Barmen despise making mojitos. The descendant of various Caribbean rum-based cocktails, they only became truly popular in the early 2000s.…
Portuguese wines are back
Regular readers will recall my fondness for Lord Falkland’s observation that “when it is not necessary to change, it is…
What I learned from my time in Taiwan
When hearing “Taiwan,” people who have some awareness of the world will think of its focal role in US-China relations…
What the BBC gets wrong about the Gaza conflict
This week, the BBC was accused of breaching its own editorial guidelines on more than 1,500 occasions and displaying a…
The decline and fall of Tariq Ramadan
Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and a well-known figure in the Islamic world, has…
We all know the NHS is broken – but can Labour fix it?
There are few surprises in Lord Darzi’s review of the National Health Service, not least because much of it has…
Has Keir Starmer forgotten that he’s prime minister?
Shortly before noon, Sir Keir Starmer and his closest chums peeped out from behind the Speaker’s chair to see if…
Nurseries have been underfunded for too long
Over a third of UK universities are in financial trouble. That’s according to Universities UK, the group that represents many…
Ukraine should be able to fight Russia as it wants to
President Joe Biden has hinted that the United States may shortly lift the restrictions it has placed on Ukraine’s use…
Keir Starmer needs to answer the question
Neither Keir Starmer nor Rishi Sunak were very good at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Though Starmer didn’t get his own…
Watch: Farage attacks ‘two tier’ Keir at PMQs
With two months to go until his successor takes over, Rishi Sunak only has a handful of PMQs sessions left.…
Is this the worst tribute so far to Queen Elizabeth II?
An official tribute to the late, much-missed Queen Elizabeth II will, in years to come, be unveiled in London’s St…
Watch: Scholz loses his temper as Germany’s migration debate rages
Ding ding! It’s not just in Westminster that the debate over illegal migration has got politicians tearing chunks out of…
