Victorian lady travellers aren’t feminist role models – they were tyrants
They cut virgin paths through tropical forests, paddled dugout canoes over West African rapids, sailed along the Yangtze in a…
In Ukraine’s presidential elections, life is imitating Netflix
Servant of the People is a hilarious Ukrainian situation comedy currently running on Netflix. It opens with a young high-school…
Netflix and kill: the creepy obsession with true crime
Thumbing avidly through Heat magazine recently in a fevered search for the latest on the Cheryl/Liam/Naomi infernal triangle, I was…
We should take a hard look at our reporting of Trump and Russia
Washington REVERSE FERRET! When he edited the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie used to throw open his office door and bellow this…
The UK’s great porn firewall experiment
In just a few weeks, the government begins its crackdown on porn. From April, all UK-based internet users will be…
Rhubarb: the most eccentrically British fruit
The tale of forced Yorkshire rhubarb has the makings of a David Lean film. Frosty Slavic beginnings, wartime devotion, steam…
How much of the Bible are Christians expected to believe?
In this careful study of the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity, John Barton, former Oriel and Laing professor of…
While Dutch schools ban birthday cakes, the British pine for the next Bake Off
The Way We Eat Now begins with a single bunch of grapes. The bunch is nothing special to the modern…
The Arabs before Islam: a rich, exotic history
In his first book, published in 1977, Tim Mackintosh-Smith described mentioning the idea of travelling to Yemen while studying Arabic…
Where is the rise of neo-Nazism around Europe leading?
‘Why would anyone write a historical study of it?’ asks Gavriel Rosenfeld about the Fourth Reich at the start of…
Socrates the romantic hero?
If western philosophy is no more than ‘footnotes to Plato’, so, arguably, is the myth of its founding hero, Socrates.…
What makes Kim Jong-il cute — and Barack Obama not?
Ordinarily, I love books that answer questions I’ve never asked, but Simon May’s baffling book has blown my mind. The…
Farewell Bernie Gunther: Metropolis, by Philip Kerr, reviewed
Philip Kerr’s first Bernie Gunther novel, March Violets, was published 30 years ago. From the start, the format was a…
The cruise of a lifetime: Proleterka, by Fleur Jaeggy, reviewed
Near the start of Fleur Jaeggy’s extraordinary novel Proleterka, the unnamed narrator reflects: ‘Children lose interest in their parents when…
Robert A. Heinlein: the ‘giant of SF’ was sexist, racist — and certainly no stylist
Like someone who has bought a first computer, then reads the manual from front to back but never actually gets…
The Lady with the Limp: homage to the one-legged Virginia Hall, SOE’s ‘most dangerous’ agent
‘This seems to be in your rough area. I mean, it contains wooden legs and everything…’ my commissioning editor at…
My ringside seat on the Mary Quant revolution
I think I probably qualify as the oldest fashion editor in the world, because in spite of my advanced age…
Listening to plays in a foreign language is a weirdly engaging experience
As the ravens circle around Broadcasting House in London’s West End, presaging difficult times ahead for BBC Radio, with less…
Has Bruce Norris bitten off more than he can chew?
Bruce Norris is a firefighter among dramatists. He runs towards danger while others sprint in the other direction. His Pulitzer-winning…
The joy of George Shaw’s miserable paintings of a Coventry council estate
All good narrative painting contains an element of allegory, but most artists don’t go looking for it on a Coventry…
The most glorious singing anyone born after 1970 will ever have heard: La forza del destino reviewed
To stage Verdi’s Il Trovatore, they say, is easy: you just need the four greatest singers in the world. The…
The greatest Beatle? Pete Best
Which of the Beatles would you most like to have been? Not either of the dead ones, presumably. Nor the…
Powerful elegy for a world that is slipping away: Tate Britain’s The Asset Strippers reviewed
There was a moment more than 20 years ago when Bankside Power Station was derelict but its transformation into Tate…
Clumsy, long and lacking circus thrills: Tim Burton’s Dumbo reviewed
Dumbo is an elephant we can’t forget. More than 70 years since Disney’s 1941 film, the big-eared baby is still…
My prescription to make New York happy again
New York This place feels funny, a bit like Beirut, where Christians, Jews, Muslims, Druze and encamped Palestinians live…
