Iranian picnics
Iranians adore a picnic. During the country’s most ancient festival, Nowruz, the Persian new year, they brandish baskets of food…
How fact killed my belief in forensics
I grew up in the golden age of forensic science, at a time when expert witnesses were becoming celebs, each…
Nattery and nice
Have you ever taken a piece of advice? I’m not asking a rhetorical question. Have you ever once in your…
No more Mr Nasty Guy
In theory, it should be a perfect match. John Morton – the man behind the brilliantly assured sitcom W1A which…
Letters
Wrong is right Sir: Having spent most of my working life in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), I never pass up an…
Royal Notebook
The monarchy has a race problem. And it has much more to do with Theresa May and Boris Johnson than…
Abortion is still one of the great moral issues
There are two things non-Americans can almost never understand about America and should probably never speak about. The first is…
Losing the plot
The title of the Donmar’s new effort, Marys Seacole, appears to be a misprint and that makes the reader look…
The perfect pop star
Dua Lipa’s second album, Future Nostalgia, was released at the least promising moment possible: 27 March 2020, the day after…
Portrait of the week
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced £300 million more in military aid for Ukraine. Speaking by video to the…
A dangerous balancing act
Thomas Cromwell’s biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch once told me that my father’s family, the Dormers, had been servants of the great…
Wild life
Yet again, millions of civilians across the Horn of Africa are starving. The world blames the crisis on drought and…
Solution to 2551: Madness
The four-letter word was BAND. Unclued lights suggest bandicoot (7A),bandh (11), banda (41), bandana (1D), bandoneon (3), bandook (7D), bandar…
The rise and rise of women’s sport
You might have missed this but something very big is happening in women’s sport. The sheer numbers watching are sensational:…
Porn
Are we living in a new pornocracy? The first one spanned six decades of the 10th century, during which there…
Real life
‘Missing Dog, Please Do Not Call, Chase or Try To Grab Her!! She Will Run!!’ This notice, featuring the face…
The road not taken
In Competition No. 3247, you were asked to submit the reflections of a well-known writer on a career path they…
2554: Going, going…
The unclued lights, including one of two words, are of a kind, all confirmed in Chambers. A further example (4)…
Puzzle no. 701
White to play. Reshevsky-Savon, Petropolis 1973. Reshevsky played the awful 1 Qxg6+, and resigned after 1…Bxg6. Many moves win, but…
Gorilla tactics
There is a video in which a small group of students amble about passing a basketball back and forth. The…
