Letters: What would be the point of a second referendum?
Another referendum? Sir: Matthew Parris’s article ‘What question should a second referendum ask?’ (26 October) occasioned a wry smile from me…
The Tories are Boris Johnson’s Conservatives now
How much does Boris Johnson’s move to an early election resemble Mrs May’s disastrous one in 2017? In two important…
If you do one thing this election, stop your kids voting
As I write this, MPs are arguing about whether a general election should be on 9 December or 12 December.…
Are you tingle-minded? The rapid rise of ASMR
I once had a flatmate called Tom, who behaved very oddly when our cleaner came round. On mornings when she…
I’m taking inspiration from an ancient Athenian
How sorry I felt for the poor man who died this week stuck up a 290ft chimney in Carlisle despite…
Sajid Javid has become the doormat Chancellor
Mario Draghi, who retired as president of the European Central Bank this week, was arguably the first holder of that…
General election 2019: can Boris Johnson succeed where Theresa May failed?
This general election isn’t the most important in a generation, it is the most significant in the lifetime of anyone…
Election 2019: how the Tories plan to break Labour’s ‘red wall’
Of all those fighting this general election, the Conservatives are the only ones who need a majority. Labour just needs…
The story behind Donald Trump’s fake withdrawal from Syria
That noise you can hear is Donald Trump flip–flopping in the sand. Last week, American troops and dozens of tanks…
Maro Itoje is a national hero for our time
Sport is a paradox. It’s supposed to be. Sport divides, but then again, sport unites. The England rugby union team…
The family that helped Maro Itoje become a sports star
‘Education, education, education.’ At the time when Tony Blair was repeating this phrase after Labour’s victory in 1997, a Nigerian…
Children’s literature has become horribly right-on
There was a spat the other week about a children’s book, Equal to Everything: Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court,…
Toxic regulations, not the fire brigade, are to blame for the Grenfell deaths
It has been bizarre to hear the London Fire Brigade taking the brunt of the blame for the deaths of…
Rachel Johnson: everyone in my family is getting quince paste for Christmas
Brrring! Freddy Gray of this parish is on the blower. ‘How about a piece for this week saying he’s won,…
The long death of South Africa’s political centre
Cape Town Last Sunday, when South Africa beat Wales to go through to the rugby World Cup final against England,…
The unlikely beauty of urinals
In 1966, just as he was becoming famous, Michael Caine met John Wayne. The Holly-wood veteran offered him some advice:…
Three dashing Frenchmen captivate Victorian London
Do not google Samuel Jean Pozzi. If you want to enjoy Julian Barnes’s The Man in the Red Coat —…
Crime fiction: a sole survivor is haunted by a family tragedy on a remote Scottish island
James Sallis has a modus operandi: never to waste a word. Sarah Jane (No Exit Press, £8.99) follows this stricture…
As well as being a mythic tale, Moby-Dick is a superb a guide to oceanography
Anyone who has read Moby-Dick will recognise the moment, 32 chapters in, when their line of attention, hitherto slackly paying…
Kathleen Jamie’s luminous new essays brim with sense and sensibility
There is a moment in one of the longer pieces in Surfacing, Kathleen Jamie’s luminous new collection of essays, when…
The real villain of the House of York was Richard III’s elder brother
Trying to describe the outcome of the Wars of the Roses — the fall of the House of York —…
My short, bitter-sweet marriage to the radical historian Raphael Samuel
In a telling moment early on in A Radical Romance, Alison Light admits that she once identified with the character…
Spooky stories for Halloween
It is surely significant that Ed Parnell’s first novel The Listeners was an updated examination of themes latent in Walter…
Debbie Harry makes the perfect pop star
My admiration for Deborah Harry goes back a long way and — fittingly for a woman who even as a…
‘The only place I can’t get my plays on is Britain’: Sir Peter Brook interviewed
‘Everyone of us knows we deserve to be punished,’ says the frail old man before me in a hotel café.…
