The pressure on Theresa May is rising
Cans kicked down the road, last–minute concessions made, the process kept on track — just. This is how many people…
Justin Trudeau is far more pointless than Donald Trump
‘Trudeau or Trump?’ was a choice which Theresa May, with unusually ready wit, evaded in Parliament on Monday. No doubt…
What kills migrants on boats? The left’s good intentions
I have been scouring the internet trying to find a right-wing festival to take the family to this summer. I…
Is it ok for Muslim parents to stop their kids having non-Muslim pals?
Is it all right for the Muslim parents of children at British state schools to prevent their sons and daughters…
How to raise and train a teenage daughter
‘Dad, am I driving like a normal driver yet? Are you relaxing like a normal relaxed passenger or are you…
For Pester of TSB, like Patterson of BT, the only way is exit
Should he stay or should he go — or will he already have gone by the time you read this?…
Trump vs Nato: the trade war is becoming a security crisis
For Theresa May, the most worrying part of Donald Trump’s talks with Kim Jong-un came two days before the two…
I rented out my home. The tenants turned it into a brothel
I had been in Los Angeles for less than a month when I received the call from a concerned neighbour…
All hail Æthelflæd! The first Brexiteer
This week, Prince Edward was paying tribute to a much-loved Queen. Not ‘Mummy’ — but Queen Æthelflæd, Alfred the Great’s…
Marxism didn’t die. It’s alive and well and living among us
I remember the autumn day in 1990 when they came to cart away the large hammer and sickle outside my…
Becoming German has helped me understand Brexit
In the end, after all the waiting, the document didn’t look like much — a sheet of A4 paper adorned…
I rely on soup kitchens for food and friends
I was born in north London, at the Whittington Hospital in Archway, and at the age of 62, after many…
No wi-fi, no TV and no neighbours – staying with the Landmark Trust is bliss
About halfway across Lundy, if you’re trudging from the landing bay towards the north lighthouse, there’s a tiny holiday cottage…
It took a long time for de Gaulle to become ‘de Gaulle’
When General de Gaulle published the first volume of his war memoirs in 1954, he signed only four presentation copies:…
The story of the last living survivor of the Atlantic slave trade is a high adventure
Zora Neale Hurston, the African-American novelist-ethnographer, was a luminary of the New Negro Movement, later renamed by American scholars the…
The scandal of American shipping – incompetence, venality and shocking safety standards
‘We are globalisation,’ a senior executive at the shipping company Maersk told me. ‘We enable it, and we have questions…
Rock and Roll is Life: The True Story of the Helium Kids by One Who Was There: A Novel, by D.J. Taylor, reviewed
The narrator-protagonist of D.J. Taylor’s new novel, a mild-mannered Oxford graduate named Nick Du Pont, has resisted the lure of…
Russia’s obsession with securing a warm-water port changed the history of Central Asia
In the 13th century, having overrun and terrorised Europe as far as Budapest, and in the process possibly bringing with…
American Histories, by John Edgar Wideman, reviewed
This new collection of John Edgar Wideman’s short stories comes across the pond as one of four handsomely packaged volumes…
The Shape of the Ruins, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, reviewed
What makes Colombia remind me of Ireland? It’s not only the soft rain that falls from grey skies on the…
Happy Little Bluebirds, by Louise Levene, reviewed
In 1940, the British Security Coordination sent an agent with an assistant to a Hollywood film studio to help promote…
Climbing Everest with Brian Blessed is the nearest anyone will get to encountering the yeti
In 1969 the body of an ape-like creature, preserved in ice inside an insulated box, came to light in Minnesota.…
It’s the wreckage of alcoholism, not the road to recovery, that makes for enthralling reading
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, novelist, columnist, bestselling essayist and assistant professor at Colombia University, makes for bracing reading. Clever,…
The wit and wisdom of Dr Johnson is still of benefit to us all
The most irritating of recent publishing trends must be the literary self-help guide, and Henry Hitchings’s contribution to the genre…
Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers, by Ryan O’Neill reviewed
Almost 120 years ago, the Australian writer Henry Lawson offered some counsel to those who came after him, writing that…
