Bring on the next Black Wednesday
At the Brexit-related cabinet last week — as revealed by James Forsyth in these pages — David Lidington made an…
This Budget showed the Tories preparing for defeat, not victory
There’s a spectre haunting the Tories — the spectre of 1997. Tories fear that history could be about to repeat…
How smoking saved my life
I almost got killed this week. I went for a very early morning walk in a New Hampshire forest, in…
In defence of university drinking rituals
When the Fawn saw the selfies Boy had taken in the aftermath of his college football club’s initiation ceremony, first…
What Mills & Boon can teach us in the age of #MeToo
In celebration of its 110th birthday, I downloaded a Mills & Boon — The Greek Tycoon’s Blackmailed Mistress — and…
Has Philip Hammond saved the high street? No – but every little helps
How much did Philip Hammond’s giveaway Budget help dying town centres? Not enough, say campaigners, but let’s give the Chancellor…
Angela Merkel is on her way out – and so is her vision for the EU
Whatever anyone’s views on the enterprise, there was one question always begging to be asked of the European Union: ‘What…
How WhatsApp stops the Tory plotters plotting
How to explain Theresa May’s resilience? As Prime Minister, she has survived mishaps and calamities that would have finished off…
Trump’s anti-Iran vendetta is starting to backfire
It says something about the level of political discourse in America that Donald Trump decided to trumpet sanctions on Iran…
The loan charge scandal: the Treasury U-turn destroying the lives of hardworking families
You probably haven’t heard of the loan charge. I hadn’t until a couple of months ago, when I told listeners…
Fight for your right to forage!
Autumn’s wild bounty is a cause for celebration across the Continent. In France and Germany, people rush into the woods,…
The Dengie Hundred
J. A. Baker, an arthritic and short-sighted birdwatcher from Chelmsford, compared the British wilderness to ‘the goaded bull at bay,…
Germaine Greer continues to shock and awe
There is an African bird called the ox-pecker with which Germaine Greer, conversant as she is with the natural world,…
Must Ovid be hijacked by the alt-right?
Who could possibly take exception to the Stoics? One of the more passive arms of Hellenistic philosophy, Stoicism required its…
Francis of Assisi’s life in poetry will stay in the mind forever
This passionate series of engagements with the life of St Francis will stay in my mind for a very long…
Horrors of the house of wax: Little, by Edward Carey, reviewed
The reader of Edward Carey’s Little must have a tender heart and a strong stomach. You will weep, you will…
A novel view of Brexit: Middle England, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed
Jonathan Coe writes compelling, humane and funny novels, but you sometimes suspect he wants to write more audacious ones. He…
In the garden of good and evil: the power of the poppy
America has for years been struggling with a shortage of the drugs it uses to execute people, yet it was…
It’s thought that counts when it comes to good prose
This is a sentence. As is this — not an exceptionally beautiful one, but a sentence all the same, just…
Insomnia is key to my creativity
A genre of memoir currently in vogue involves entwining the author’s personal story with the cultural history of a given…
The vampire’s role in Marxist philosophy
‘What!’, railed Voltaire in his Dictionnaire Philosophique of 1764. ‘Is it in our 18th century that vampires still exist?’ Hadn’t…
Treat in store: Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver, reviewed
In a living room in Vineland, New Jersey, in the 1870s, a botanist and entomologist named Mary Treat studied the…
Just a man: Demystifying Napoleon
Who says that the ‘great man’ theory of history is dead? Following hard on the heels of Andrew Roberts’s magnificent…
If only we could hibernate all winter
As travel writer, nature writer, memory retriever and, I would add, prose-poet of mesmerising lyricism, Horatio Clare is a celebrant…
Why journalists should boycott the Comment Awards
Shortly before his death, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that capitalism crushed the integrity of artists and intellectuals. Assessed…