Shelf conscious: I had no idea I was such a show-off
I’ve just had new bookshelves put up in the hall, a whole wall-full of them, and for the first time…
Iran alone: Tehran’s perspective on escalating hostilities
On 20 May, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, predicted that Donald Trump would fail to subdue Iran just as…
The day Turkish democracy died
‘It’s official. Turkey is a banana republic!’ My friend Mustapha, a serial entrepreneur, sends me a flurry of doom-laden WhatsApp…
Parent trap: WhatsApp groups are feeding our fears
The mother of a little girl in my son’s year at school recently committed suicide. On the surface she was…
The magic of the Chelsea Flower Show
Chelsea, the most famous flower show in the world, pulled in its devotees once more this week, with its accustomed…
Towards a technological utopia
The rebranding of John Browne has been a long and, to those of us living overseas, instructive affair. Readers will…
Passing bells for old Tokyo
In Edo (now Tokyo), before the Meiji restoration, bells marked the beginning of each hour. The hours were named after…
Oddballs of English philosophy
Charles Kay Ogden once proposed that conversations would be conducted more efficiently if participants wore masks. Apart from confirming the…
Bach helped me survive Bergen-Belsen
One of the great joys of the 18th-century novella La petite maison is the way Jean-François de Bastide matches the…
Last lines on Brexit from Geoffrey Hill
In 2012 OUP published Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems; they could have waited, because they’re now going to need another edition.…
Brutish Brits: You Will Be Safe Here, by Damian Barr, reviewed
Damian Barr explains the upsetting genesis of his impressive debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, in his acknowledgements: This…
The new treasures of Pompeii
One afternoon in AD 79 an unusual cloud appeared above Vesuvius in the Bay of Naples. ‘It was raised high…
Sunday night on the Beeb was an orgy of virtue-signalling and third-rate sport
After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they…
Forget the The Reith Lectures. To understand the world listen to George the Poet
At last a podcast that takes the medium to its limit, created by someone who loves listening, understands how it…
A very odd two hours: Sting and Shaggy reviewed
Many is the pop star who has craved gravitas. Only Sting, however, has pursued it by covering John Dowland on…
This Boris play only gets it half-right
The opening of Jonathan Maitland’s new play about Boris purports to be based on real events. Just before the referendum,…
A mesmerising retrospective: Victoria Crowe at City Art Centre, Edinburgh, reviewed
This mesmerising retrospective takes up three floors of the City Art Centre, moving in distinct stages from the reedy flanks…
The forgotten masterpieces of Amy Beach
At the Wigmore Hall last Friday, the Takacs String Quartet and Garrick Ohlsson played a piano quintet that was once…
If opera survives, it’ll be thanks to artists and curators, not opera houses
It was bucketing it down in Venice, yet the beach was heaving. Families, lovebirds, warring kids, a yappy mutt, all…
Rocketman is cheesy and clichéd – and all the better for it
There have been claims that Rocketman, the biopic of Elton John, is ‘cheesy’ and ‘clichéd’, but, in truth, you do…
My feud with Conrad Black
Goody goody gumdrops! The Donald has pardoned Lord Black and I couldn’t be happier. Conrad got a bum deal and…
Banana leaf, wood-effect on knitted? Choosing my mother’s coffin
The mental fruit of yet another sleepless night was that my mother was determined to arrange her funeral as quickly…
My little lodger has been stolen from me
‘Farewell then, little lodger. I wish you would stay for ever but I understand that girls in their early twenties…
In praise of older horses – and their trainers
Newbury is as fair a test for a racehorse as you can get with its galloping track and a wide-open…
Bridge
Simon Gillis coined a term to describe his disappointment when he sits himself out to allow four of his professionals…
