A mysterious kind of beauty
Too often dismissed as leaden or trivial, Dutch art is a ‘fathomless world, with a strangeness to arouse and disturb’, says Laura Cumming
What have we been missing?
Ge’s short stories set in China are her most adventurous, ranging from politics in the time of Confucius to sex in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
Let there be blood
Between his return from exile and his death, Lenin launched – and perverted – the revolution that shapes world politics today
‘The Romans always win’
The emperors of Rome’s golden age avoided civil war at all costs. But wars against other peoples were a different matter, says Peter Stothard
The failure of forced transition despite public lust for green energy
Throughout history, interactions of supply and demand have driven ‘transitions’ – think horses to cars and trains; whale oil to…
Big government, jobs, and productivity
My mum arrived in Australia with the first boatload of second world war refugees at the end of 1947. She…
Extraction 2: action goes old school
One of the biggest surprises in recent years is Extraction. A no-nonsense, adrenaline-fuelled action movie about a tough soldier ploughing his…
Affirmative action is dead in US universities
Universities in the US, by law, will no longer be allowed to discriminate to allow access to college education based…
Kamala Harris shares life-changing hair secrets
Although he has been a harsh critic in the past, Cockburn would like to thank fashion icon and hair-game legend…
SCOTUS has made the right call on student debt forgiveness
The Supreme Court correctly overruled President Joe Biden’s attempt to use executive power to forgive student loan debt on Friday.…
The climate ‘crisis’ has nothing to do with the Holocaust
What is it with environmentalists and the Holocaust? Barely a month goes by without some prominent green or another outrageously…
Singapore should serve as a model for how to fix racial disparities
In theory, the SCOTUS decision to strike down affirmative action in higher education should be considered as part of the…
Zac Goldsmith: the greatest hits
It seems that Zac Goldsmith’s decade-long dance with government is over. The Old Etonian today handed his notice after four…
Biden’s decline deepens in MSNBC interview
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace conducted an interview with Joe Biden (if you can call it that) that came across more like twenty minutes…
At home with Jacob Rees-Mogg
Before I arrived at Gournay Court, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s seventeenth-century home in Somerset, I’d missed the main event. Beforehand, I’d asked…
Does the TUC understand what the word ‘mum’ means?
Imagine if, in 1868, when the TUC was founded, someone had told those warriors for workers’ rights that one day…
Zac Goldsmith quits with personal attack on Sunak
One name stood out yesterday in the Privileges Committee dossier on parliamentarians who had attacked the panel over its investigation…
The truth about ‘affirmative action’
I’ve never cared for the expression ‘affirmative action’, which puts a positive spin on a negative practice: naked, institutionalised racial…
France is in danger of descending into anarchy
France endured its worst night of rioting yet on Thursday as violence continued across the country. For the third consecutive…
Macron hobnobs with Elton John as France burns
France is in chaos after another night of violence sparked by the shooting of a teenager by a Paris policeman.…
Why the Supreme Court’s Harvard decision matters
The decision is all anybody can talk about. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s the banner headline in the New York…
The genius of Nancy Mitford
Nancy, the first – and perhaps most famous – of the six Mitford girls, died half-a-century ago on 30 June.…
Troubled artist Hunter Biden uses paintings to settle paternity suit with former stripper
Hunter Biden has settled his long-running child support case in Arkansas. The president’s son has reached an agreement with Lunden…
The governing orthodoxy or the truth?
No, look, seriously, what do you say to a Labor government that plans to fine companies billions of dollars for…
