Blame it all on the middle-class drug users
We can suffer a lethal pandemic with lockdowns, petrol shortages and supermarket shelves almost entirely denuded of sausages. But when…
Such sweet sorrow
‘It’s generally agreed that in contemporary practice, this opera proposes significant ethical and cultural problems,’ says the director Lindy Hume…
E-everything is heading your way
Trends in New York City tend to foretell trends in London, whose fashions in turn set the pace for smaller…
Letters
How to stay safe Sir: Mary Wakefield is correct to highlight the opprobrium heaped on anyone who suggests sensible safety…
A spoonful of Sugar
Murder Island features eight real-life ‘ordinary people’ seeking to solve a fictional killing on a fictional Scottish island. What follows…
Di another day
This week, an excellent film (Moving On) and a film that isn’t at all, but is entirely worth it as…
Sent to Coventry
The story is likely apocryphal — and so disgraceful I almost hesitate to tell it — but it goes like…
Tory ministers, not business leaders, were drunk on cheap labour
‘Blame it all on business’ was the Tory strategists’ answer to petrol queues and the risk of a no-turkey Christmas…
My nightmare weekend of deer and dogs
Caroline and I are just back from a weekend break in Scotland and, nice though it was, I hadn’t realised…
Hals apoppin’
Since art auctions were invented, they have served to hype artists’ prices. It can happen during an artist’s lifetime —…
Remaking history
The Normal Heart is not about Aids. Larry Kramer’s play is set in New York in 1981 at a time…
Absurd plots à la Bond
So James Bond is back, doing exactly what he always does, inviting the audience into a fantasy world for the…
Festive season
‘Here you are, darling,’ I said to my husband. ‘These lines might have been written for you: “Drinke, quaffe, be…
Low life
The chesty Corsican taxi driver was giving me his earnest appraisal of the way things were headed in France politically.…
Sometimes wrongs make a right
It is interesting to consider what would have happened if the Covid virus had emerged in 1921. Or 1821. Or…
Barometer
Whole-life sentences How many prisoners are serving whole-life sentences? — There are currently 74 prisoners in prison with whole-life tariffs;…
Diary
The rhythm of the big party conference leader interviews is a strange one. First come days of slow, repetitive, detailed…
