One nasty moment aside, the ENB’s Manon is superlative
If you like the BBC’s Les Misérables, you’ll love English National Ballet’s Manon. Manon, in Kenneth MacMillan’s telling, is The…
As so often, teenage girls called this one right: The 1975 reviewed
The teenage girls are often right. They were right about Sinatra and they were right about Elvis. They were right…
My hero Roger Federer
Asked how he was feeling as he was about to give a speech to a ladies group, Mark Twain, looking…
When a reader invited me to stay with him in Exmoor estate, how could I refuse?
My first night back in Blighty, I sat all evening at the kitchen table drinking wine with a charming, courteous…
Surrey’s Gore-tex-collar crime wave
The frustrating thing about rights is that when you give them to people they don’t cherish and appreciate them. They…
Game changer
Game Changer, the long-awaited book by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, has now appeared. This represents the most thorough inside…
no. 538
White to play. This is from Carlsen-Rapport, Wijk aan Zee 2019. The influence of AlphaZero is being felt at elite…
Happy talk
In Competition No. 3082 you were invited to write a poem taking as your first line ‘Happy the man, and…
2392: Beknighted
The unclued lights, two of two words and the remainder when paired, are of a kind. Across 1 No…
to 2389: All change
The paired unclued lights are anagrams of one another, most being symmetrically arranged; 2/21, 5/23, 12/41, 15/25, 19D/20. First prize Alan Peevers,…
The media were guilty of their own ‘fake news’ when it came to protesting schoolchildren
Donald Trump is often criticised by liberal news organisations like CNN and the New York Times for resorting to the…
When trans sportsmen and women compete, can it ever be a level playing field?
Amid the many splendours of West Side Story is this lyric: ‘My sister wears a moustache, my brother wears a…
Dear Mary: how do I stop a Londoner dominating my village book club?
Q.A senior colleague, on discovering that I’m a friend of someone who has become quite famous, engaged with me warmly…
If Tony Blair was still prime minister, I’d be less terrified of Holborn Dining Room
The 1930s aesthetic is not quite as fun as it used to be. You can enjoy the detritus of fascism…
There’s something grotesque about the jargon of Universal Credit
The government (if it hasn’t fallen yet) has found difficulty moving people onto Universal Credit from the benefits that they…
Portrait of Leonard French by Hal Missingham
Arguably the most monumental of Australian artists, Leonard French experienced extraordinary fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some…
Blasphemy notes
Affection for the Prophet more than for life itself The plight of the Pakistani Christian woman known as Asia Bibi…
Lefty francophiles
What is it about left-leaning elites (so the significant preponderance of today’s ‘elite’ class) and France? It’s hard not to…
Silence of the Lambassador
It’s beyond embarrassing, it’s humiliating. But more importantly, it is the perfect metaphor for how the values of mainstream Australia…
Simon Collins
Underpinning Orwell’s most chilling dystopian vision was the belief that controlling what people say is half way to controlling what…
Clive spends big on Clive
Is it possible to buy your way into the federal parliament? It seems that we are about to find out…
The Left’s heart of darkness
When detailing the origins of the culture wars the British conservative politician Michael Gove refers to the establishment of the…
The problem with ‘right of return’
The United Nations Global Compact on Migration has brought issues relating to migrants and refugees to the fore for many…
