Rory Stewart: Why I’d make a good prime minister
Almost nobody in Westminster admits to wanting to be prime minister. Rory Stewart is a cheerful exception. Most leadership hopefuls…
Is anything creepier than a ‘male feminist’?
Over a drink recently I sat next to a man who announced, barely before he’d taken his first sip, that…
Our churches aren’t perfect, but if we lose them we will all be worse off
After hearing about the massacre in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, I went to church, happily sang the word God…
How Ireland became a back door to Britain
I was working in Johannesburg when I first got wind of the fact that Ireland has become an illegal back…
Stop going through the motions – committees are a waste of time
God save us from committees. They’re an increasingly outdated way of getting things done. But there’s a certain sort of…
The weird and wacky world of Goop
The other day, as I walked with my partner through Notting Hill, we came across a shop which deserves to…
Has Shakespeare become the mascot of Brexit Britain?
The deployment of Shakespeare to describe Brexit is by now a cliché. It might take the form of a quotation,…
It’s ugliness, not beauty, that spurs us to action
Timothy Hyde’s Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye is not about why we find things ugly. It’s…
The serious games of the Oulipians
Have you heard of the Oulipo? The long-running Parisian workshop for experimental writing? Even if you haven’t, you might have…
Cracking jokes with Dr Johnson
I cast my Readers under two general Divisions, the Mercurial and the Saturnine. The first are the gay part of…
Would Faber & Faber still exist without T.S. Eliot?
Like many a 20th-century publishing house, the fine old firm of Faber & Faber came about almost by accident. The…
An outsider inside: We, The Survivors, by Tash Aw, reviewed
It’s not immediately obvious who the survivors in Tash Aw’s formidable new novel are, or who the narrator even is,…
A remote island tribe in Indonesia makes whaling seem positively noble
Our relations with cetaceans have always been charged with danger and delight, represented by the extremes of the Book of…
Is British food really still wodges of stodge?
‘You are what you eat.’ The old phrase always reminds me of Denzil, John Sparkes’s character in the comedy sketch…
God save us from Søren Kierkegaard
Surely God, if He existed, would find a major source of entertainment down the ages in the activities of theologians,…
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be profiled by Janet Malcolm?
God, I wish I was Janet Malcolm. Fifty or more years as a staff writer on the New Yorker, reviews…
What makes British art British?
There’s no avoiding the Britishness of British art. It hits me every time I walk outside and see dappled trees…
Hearing Gilbert & Sullivan on period instruments was a revelation
‘I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,’ wrote Stravinsky in one…
Notre Dame is an architectural nullity
Notre Dame is only important from a Shakespeare’s-birthplace point of view. Architecturally it is a nullity beside the cathedrals of…
Not nearly as good as the book: Bel Canto reviewed
Bel Canto is an adaptation of the Ann Patchett novel first published in 2001, which I remembered as being brilliant…
Why was Something Understood cut?
It was never given the choicest slot in the schedule, airing first thing on Sunday morning with a repeat at…
Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?
‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…
One of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen in the theatre: A German Life reviewed
It starts at a secretarial college. The stage is occupied by a dignified elderly lady who recalls her pleasure at…
In praise of privacy
David Niven’s younger son Jamie, now an old man and a bit overweight, approached my table and announced that he…
The joy of scrumpy
‘How’s your day going?’ said the taxi driver as he snapped his knob into drive. If I caught the plane…
