Unheeded warnings
In 1928, a modest young lecturer from Wilwaukee, Mildred Harnack, née Fish, arrived in Berlin to begin her PhD in…
No saintly innocent
The Sins of G.K. Chesterton demands our attention because, as Richard Ingrams notes in his introduction, the literature on this…
Cock and bull stories
The word ‘hoax’ did not catch on till the early 19th century. Before that one spoke of a hum, a…
Everyday miracles
On watching transplant surgery, I can give prosaic but essential advice: have a good breakfast. Each operation can last 12…
Margaret Thatcher vs everyone else
Diplomatic negotiations are rarely fully described by their participants in books, for two reasons. They are usually secret until much…
Tough old world
Like a basking shark, Val McDermid once remarked, a crime series needs to keep moving or die. The same could…
An isolated misfit
Why did W.G. Sebald risk his reputation by telling such strange, repeated lies, wonders Lucasta Miller
Biden’s press conference was a feast of disinformation
Joe Biden emerged from his cave, saw his shadow, and told us there will be three more years of winter.…
Did ‘gender studies’ lose Afghanistan?
Twenty years of war in Afghanistan are over. What comes next is 20 years, or even more, of recriminations and…
Which lobbyists run MPs’ interest groups?
David Cameron’s links to Greensill have brought the issue of lobbying back into the spotlight. Next month the Committee on…
France is nervous about welcoming a wave of Afghan refugees
Emmanuel Macron has once more infuriated many in France, but this time it has nothing to do with Covid passports…
How are the vaccines affected by the Delta variant?
Has the emergence of the Delta, or Indian, variant reduced the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and if so by how…
Even the Taliban are in shock: my week on the Kabul front line
I’ve been to the front line in Iraq, Syria and Libya and witnessed all kinds of crazy, unlikely events. But…
Afghanistan will once again become a breeding ground for terror
‘Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it’s time to end the forever war’. So…
The truth about Biden’s booster shots
Don’t let this relatively Fauci-free week fool you. The Biden administration is still laser-focused on the coronavirus. In fact, as…
Kabul: the harbinger of western decline or the catalyst for Trump’s return
Recently revealed from the fall of Afghanistan is that President Obama exchanged Kairullah Khaikhwa, the public face of the Taliban leadership,…
The Afghan state was dying before the Taliban took over
To understand how Afghanistan is going to change in the future, you have to first understand what the ‘Islamic Republic’…
Revealed: how much debt the government has racked up for each of us
Although many people are aware that government expenditure will exceed government revenue for the foreseeable future, it can be difficult…
The Taliban’s lightning victory was no surprise
As the debacle in Kabul unfolds, in Washington and London the mud slinging about who is to blame is beginning.…
Afghanistan: The error of withdrawal
Like many veterans, this last week has been one that has seen me struggle through anger, grief and rage. The…
