The virus is in the political ranks
The politicians are ruining Australia far sooner than anyone ever expected
‘Where I grew up, classical music was diversity’
Richard Bratby talks to Birmingham Opera Company’s new music director Alpesh Chauhan about his Brummie roots, Bruckner and how his BAME heritage is a non-story
What really happened?
This debut novel, which opens with ‘a high- school lacrosse party in 1999 and the rumour of a sexual assault,’…
Viva la vulva!
I spent half an hour this week listening to a woman make a plaster cast of her vulva. Kat Harbourne,…
Ill-received pronunciation
Radio 4 recently ran an adaptation of Albert Camus’s The Plague in which the protagonist, Dr Bernard Rieux, was transformed…
Exam failures
It was obvious that closing schools would hit the poorest hardest, inflicting permanent damage and deepening inequality. While many private…
At last, boardroom pay starts to swing away from blatant excess
At a low moment in late March, I suggested that all large companies should consider temporary cuts in executive salaries…
His dark materials
Matteo Garrone’s live-action version of Pinocchio is visually sumptuous and there are some enchanting characters (my favourite: Snail). And unlike…
Rotating the Lords
Arguments about the purpose or indeed very existence of anything resembling the House of Lords would have struck classical democratic…
Stitches and bad-ass bitches
If it’s a test of a good documentary series that it takes us deep into an unknown, even unimaginable world,…
High life
Serifos There’s no high life here, only family life, so I’ve been hitting the books about great Greeks of…
Wine windows
Stroll around Florence and you’ll notice little ornate openings embedded in the walls of Renaissance palazzos. They look like doorways…
Low life
‘There’s no need to wipe down your tray table,’ screeched Heidi, chief steward of the ‘amazing team you have looking…
Real life
We have beans, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, butternut squash, plums and strawberries growing in our garden. I dug up and replanted…
Portrait of the week
Home In fine weather with calm seas, 565 migrants in four days crossed the Channel in small craft. French officials…
We want lies
On 27 November 1960 African and Indian diplomats visiting the UN in New York opened their mail to find a…
Grubby thumb prints and peeling glue
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
2470: Express route
The unclued lights from 1 Down to 44 are of a kind with 4 overrunning a barline into 22. Ignore…
Puzzle No. 617
Black to play. Efimov–Bronstein, Kiev 1941. Normally White seeks glory in the King’s Gambit, but here Bronstein scored a lightning…
Bridge
I am frankly repulsed by the latest cheats, exposed after the online invitational Alt and OCBL tournaments. When F2F bridge…
An ode to brotherhood
The concluding novel of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet is a family affair. Her intergenerational group of seeming strangers from the…
Dear Mary
Q. On my way to Devon recently I stopped for lunch with an impeccably mannered friend. He produced first crab…
Overthink
Sometimes when I ask my stertorous husband in his armchair whether he is asleep, he replies with a start: ‘Just…
