I stand with Nigel Farage
I have sweet memories of Christmas. My dad is proper old-school and would set up the video recorder. I don’t…
How Göring almost derailed the Nuremberg Trials
The new movie Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring and Rami Malek as his US Army psychiatrist, has had…
Do we really need a ‘new spin’ on Jane Austen?
If you like your period dramas butchered, then you are in for a real treat. The 250th anniversary of Jane…
My advice to Ben Stokes
In preparation for the 2005 Ashes series, the late Graham Thorpe, a man I looked up to enormously, turned to…
My lasting friendship with a disgraced MI6 officer
After a stellar career in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6, an unassuming man with a passion…
Why is the modern Church embarrassed by angels?
One day while walking in Peckham Rye Park, William Blake saw angels sitting in the trees: ‘bright angelic wings bespangled…
Why Charlie Kirk was a modern prophet
Most of us indulge in mild fortune-telling. We think ‘If the light changes before I count to five, I’ll get…
I’ll miss the unintended hilarity of the round robin
‘Dearly beloved friends and family, well, what a year it’s been! Where to start?! The big event for us –…
Why we are all solipsists
I once tried to write a novel but lacking any ear for dialogue or skill at characterisation, I abandoned the…
How the Roman plebs made modern democracy
For otherwise healthy plebs in the Roman world, survival depended on the four ‘Fs’: farming (your sole source of food…
Jung Chang: ‘Nobody can be as evil as Mao’
No writer has done more than Jung Chang to bring the horrors of Maoist China to the attention of western…
What England’s old folk songs can teach us
I grew up in the 1980s but in many ways it was more like the 1880s. We lived with my…
Labour has done more damage to our country than the Luftwaffe
I still hang out with the same two lovable crackheads I sat beside on the first day of primary school.…
The joy of a miserable literary Christmas
A Christmas Carol is pretty well unavoidable around now, with Little Women trailing somewhat behind. There’s no shortage of alternative…
David Deutsch: The Enlightenment, ‘irrational memes’ and how Wikipedia turned woke
The Amazon reviews for David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity don’t alert you to the fact that this is a…
Discrimination is good, actually
Many years ago, a friend described one of my serious literary novels as ‘clever’. I was offended – but I…
Trump has made D.C. safe again
In August, the President of the United States declared a crime ‘emergency’ in my home town of Washington D.C. Donald…
