Justin Welby: Catholic or Protestant – who cares?
Justin Welby is working in Thomas Cranmer’s old study in Lambeth Palace, a room that looks as if it hasn’t…
Davos diary: A party conference for the guilty rich
Somehow I had managed more than a quarter of a century in journalism without ever going to Davos. It had…
Britain might run out of top-class judges
When I was called to the Bar in 1967, the aim was to be appointed as a judge to the…
In Constable’s ascension, Jesus just looks quite awkward
Constable painted only three religious paintings, and when you see the one in St Mary’s Church in Dedham you realise…
The scramble for Africa goes back many centuries
A thought kept recurring as I read Toby Green’s fascinating and occasionally frustrating book on the development of West Africa…
Will we ever unravel the mysteries of Kabbalah?
In an age where ‘authenticity’ is prized above all things (even if what this actually means is that — like,…
Auberon Waugh — a demon on the page, an angel off it
Auberon Waugh was happy to admit that most journalism is merely tomorrow’s chip paper but, of all the journalists of…
The internet was never intended to spy on us
There is a trend in non-fiction — in fact my editor has been on to me about this lately —…
The unimportance of Ernest Hemingway: why should we bother reading him anymore?
What is the most repulsive sentence in English/American literature? Even as a 12-year-old American boy, I cringed when reading, in…
One hundred years on, could we cope with a new flu pandemic?
Do you remember the swine flu panic a decade ago? Jeremy Brown, the author of this book, describes it here.…
Beware the female stalker: Dream Sequence, by Adam Foulds, reviewed
Adam Foulds’s fourth novel, Dream Sequence, is an exquisitely concocted, riveting account of artistic ambition and unrequited love verging on…
The ghostly Thames: Once Upon a River, by Diane Setterfield, reviewed
While its shape is famous — prominent on maps of London and Oxford — the Thames is ‘unmappable’, according to…
Train journeys may be losing their romance — but there are other adventures still to be had
Monisha Rajesh wrote lovingly about the Indian railways in her previous book, Around India in 80 Trains; but her new…
All About Eve was all about bitching – off-screen as well as on
In 1950, Bette Davis had a string of recent flops behind her. She was 41, married to an embarrassing twerp…
A facile indulgence: Pinter Six reviewed
The cast of Party Time includes John Simm, Celia Imrie, Ron Cook, Gary Kemp and other celebrities. They play a…
Why the BBC International Playwriting Competition really matters
We don’t know whether ‘Aziz H’ listened to radio plays as he grew up in Yemen. In fact we don’t…
Boy, does Nicole Kidman look terrible: Destroyer reviewed
Destroyer is an LA noir starring Nicole Kidman ‘as you have never seen her before’. Her hair is terrible. Her…
Was Pierre Bonnard any good?
An attendant at an art gallery in France once apprehended a little old vandal, or so the story goes. He…
The brutish brilliance of Rebecca Saunders
If you take awards seriously (which of course you shouldn’t) you could argue that Rebecca Saunders is now Britain’s most…
Danny Dyer’s Right Royal Family might well be the oddest TV show of recent times
Last year on Who Do You Think You Are?, Danny Dyer — EastEnders actor and very possibly Britain’s most cockney…
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…
