Business/Robbery etc.
Rio Tinto’s ‘cave-in’: a major boost to shareholder activism A triumph of shareholder activism in a good cause – or…
Diana Rigg
It was sad the other day to hear of the passing of that scintillating lady of stage and screen Diana…
Sheku Kanneh-Mason
The world became aware of Sheku Kanneh-Mason when he played the cello at the wedding of Harry and Meghan Sussex…
Aussie Life
Simon Collins ‘That’s 6 in a row. #Melbourne is, once again, the world’s most liveable city!’ So tweeted a proud…
Brown study
Say what you want to about them, but I like pandemics. I particularly like Covid-19. Sort of. What I mean…
Have big cities had their day?
About 15 years ago I noticed a few surviving chattel houses in Barbados and wondered what they were. As it…
Days of glory
Ian Thomson describes Ravenna’s golden age, when classical Rome, Byzantium and Christianity met
Nothing special, nothing new
I have a book of essays from 1986 by a group of British and American scholars called The Special Relationship.…
Dear Mary
Q. Almost a year ago I attended the funeral of my godfather — a bachelor and distant relation whom I…
Class acts
The Last Night of the Proms came and went, and it was pretty much as anyone might have predicted, if…
Into the labyrinth
Susanna Clarke is a member of the elite group of authors who don’t write enough. In 2004, the bestselling debut…
An autumn of discontent
The government is bracing itself for a second wave of coronavirus. Everyone knew the autumn and winter would be more…
Capital letters
Irrespective of whether Donald Trump ends up being a two-term president, surely no modern political figure has done more to…
J.K. Rowling’s fundamental mistake
I had my first doubts about Lord Hall, the former director-general of the BBC, when he addressed a group of…
Our steady diet of Covid hysteria
Readers may recall a column last month that laid out powerful evidence for the proposition that the ethnic and racial…
This deal with Japan is little more than cheese and biscuits
A small cheer for Liz Truss’s treaty with Japan. It is, says the official press release, ‘the UK’s first major…
