Dis-Con notes
Watching results on Saturday night, my chief thought was less ‘Who’s going to win?’ than, rather, ‘Thank God that’s over.’…
Hockey sticks to diplomacy
If you want an inside view on the Trump White House, there could hardly be a better read than Joe…
Aussie life
I’m starting this column on the eve of the election, so you have me at a disadvantage. But not much…
Language
News reports tell us there has been a small furore over a list of ‘derogatory and offensive terms’ included in…
Wizardly wham-bam
It’s an extraordinary thing in its way to revisit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child three years after its triumphant…
Barometer
A slip of the tongue George W. Bush condemned a political system where one man could wage a ‘brutal and…
Johnson’s guilt
An ability to survive narrow scrapes has been one of Boris Johnson’s defining qualities. The pictures of Downing Street’s lockdown…
Tiger bites man
Viswanathan Anand left the spectators in awe at the Superbet Rapid earlier this month. The ‘Tiger of Madras’, as he…
Northern exposure
When Nikolaus Pevsner dedicated his 1955 Reith Lectures to ‘The Englishness of English Art’, he left out the Scots. The…
Solution to 2554: Going, going…
The unclued lights were all extinct species. PTERODON was an acceptable variation at 5 Across. DODO was to be deleted…
Now for the hard bit
Boris Johnson has been plunged back into the mire of partygate. The publication of a photograph of Johnson raising a…
Great Dane
Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen talks to Jasper Rees about why, after a break of ten years, the implausibly more-ish series is returning for a fourth season
Rotten Apples
Having now watched it to the end, I would say that Slow Horses (Apple TV+) is by far the best…
Tango traduced
Rambert ages elegantly: it might just rank as the world’s oldest company devoted to modern dance (whatever that term might…
Absolute beginner
The House of Shades is a state-of-the nation play that covers the past six decades of grinding poverty in Nottingham.…
A gigantic field of feeling
I was never into the blues that much. I listened to a bit of Roy Buchanan and Rory Gallagher but…
