The paths that lead to truth
The dust jacket of The Matter With Things quotes a large statement from an Oxford professor: ‘This is one of…
The time of our lives
The long 1990s began with the Pixies album Surfer Rosa in 1989 and ended with the invasion of Iraq in…
A game of life and death
No one boards an overladen dinghy and sets out across a choppy sea without very good reason. Laden into migrant…
High life
Gstaad OK sport fans, have you been enjoying the concentration camp Olympics? I’m sure the Uighurs in the Chinese gulag…
Low life
Eighty yards west of the high terrace where I’ve sat for three weeks recuperating is a hospice built for Napoleon’s…
The past is ever present
‘One morning in late October 1988,’ begins TheLong Song of Tchaikovsky Street, ‘this dapper-looking guy from Leiden asked me if…
Wild life
Malindi, the Indian Ocean When I lived in Jerusalem a long time ago, I often visited the Church of the…
The Liberal Party’s mission to end liberalism
Come the next election, I will be voting the Liberal Party last. My reasoning is very simple. If I am…
Can Labour members ever learn to love Keir Starmer?
Keir Starmer is the master of all he surveys. Thanks to partygate, Labour now enjoys a consistent poll lead over…
Ukraine’s plight paints a bleak vision of Europe’s future
It is tempting to view Vladimir Putin as a Cold War relic: a former KGB officer who hasn’t got over the…
How long can Japan keep foreigners locked out?
A colleague has posted on the ‘Return to Japan’ Facebook page that his hotel quarantine at Tokyo’s Narita airport is…
Is this the reason America has had such a disastrous pandemic?
If Francis Fukuyama was wrong about the end of history, he was right about one thing. Back in the scary…
Boris buys himself a reprieve
After a difficult few weeks, Boris Johnson has made it to parliamentary recess. Given few expect a no confidence vote to…
Why would the West want to invade Russia?
A June 2016 Levada poll found that 68 per cent of Russians think NATO troops in the Baltic States and…
What Mitch McConnell knows about January 6
For a party that claims it wants to move on, the Republicans are doing a remarkable job of turning the…
The hypocrisy of ‘Environmental, Social, and Governance’
After I started my business more than 30 years ago, I joined a group of fellow owners and CEOs who…
Which bread are you…?
There’s been a lot of talk in recent days about what type of bread each of us identifies with. According…
‘Fair trial’ derailed by the Prime Minister
This week’s parliamentary apology to Brittany Higgins was greeted by lawyers everywhere with a gasp of incredulity that our Prime…
Does the Bodleian really need a race adviser?
It’s a difficult time for libraries. Budget cutbacks, online competitors and rival forms of media all point to a grim…
How democratic are the French elections?
There are just 59 days to go until voters turn out for the first round of the French presidential election…
The false propaganda of racism
As a boy growing up in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising, I was used to seeing violence and cruelty.…
How high could interest rates go?
The last time that US inflation hit 7.5 per cent, Ronald Reagan was a recently-elected president. And he, older readers…
Is scrapping self-isolation safe?
Is now the right time to lift all Covid restrictions, as the Prime Minister suggested he might do from 24…
Women-only carriages are a bonkers idea
Here we go again. Another suggestion, this time by the SNP transport minister, Jenny Gilruth, to introduce women-only carriages on…
Boris vs the Blob: the real reason John Major can’t stand the PM
The embattled denizens of Downing Street must be quaking in their loafers as another incoming missile streaks in. This one…
