The lost art of the insult
Imagine I were to begin this column by remarking that a woman preaching is like a dog walking on its…
Prince Andrew: from playboy to PlayStation
Oh God, not that. That’s all we need, I thought, reading in a long account of Prince Andrew’s current travails…
The triumph of classical architecture
It is very hard to imagine the University of Oxford ever constructing a modernist building again. This is the significance…
Why was the 19th century so full of bigots and weirdos?
Da Vinci’s Laundry is based on an art world rumour. In 2017, Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ sold at Christie’s for $450…
Would you spend £30 on a Charlie Bigham’s ready meal?
Ready meals: the after-work time-saver, the dinner-party cheat – or a poor imitation of proper, cooked food? The proto-ready meal…
A Magic Flute that will make you weep
English Touring Opera has begun its autumn season and the miracle isn’t so much that they’re touring at all these…
Fionn Regan has gone method Worzel Gummidge
Watching the Mercury Music Prize on television last week, I remembered that Fionn Regan’s debut album, The End Of History,…
Thrilling tales of British pluck
Few stirring stories compare with the six-week long Battle of Baku against the Ottomans – arguably the least remembered engagement of the first world war
Farewell to Lyra: The Rose Field, by Philip Pullman, reviewed
In the final volume of The Book of Dust, Pan’s quest for Lyra’s lost imagination takes him east into another universe, while Lyra heads the same way looking for her daemon
The dangerous charm of Peter Matthiessen
The philandering author of the sublime The Snow Leopard spent a lifetime globe-hopping from the Amazonian jungle to the Siberian tundra at great cost to family life
