From now on you can assume that every TV-drama cast is female-led
From time to time, a TV show comes along which is so thrillingly original, so wildly imaginative, that you can’t…
Law & Order, made – and banned – in 1978, puts most recent crime series in the shade
It’s not every day that a television screenwriter is threatened with a trial for sedition, but G.F. Newman was after…
Lean on Pete is a beauty
Andrew Haigh makes inaction films. Weekend (2011) tells of two young homosexuals getting to know each other in Nottingham. In…
No one can beat Mary Cassatt at painting mothers and children
A lady licking an envelope. An intimate thing. It might be only the bill from the coal-man she’s paying, but…
A dated and remote two-hour polemic basking in #MeToo topicality: The Writer reviewed
Ella Hickson’s last play at the Almeida was a sketch show about oil. Her new effort uses the same episodic…
The rise – and rise – of Trump Derangement Syndrome
New York ‘What do we do with these men?’ thundered a New York Times headline. It was followed by a…
On giving and taking offence
‘Slight prick,’ she said. The nurses all say that before they slide the needle in the upstanding vein in the…
Why suburban ladies really play tennis
Because my mother is always telling me everything will be all right if I join a tennis club, I’ve joined…
Tripping in the African bush
Laikipia, Kenya Neighbours Tom and Jo came by with a bucketful of wild African mushrooms, which they had collected in…
Bridge
Playing rubber bridge the other afternoon for higher stakes than usual (£20 per hundred), I had a memorably miserable time.…
Grenke
The Grenke Chess Classic, played in Karlsruhe and Baden Baden, has been won by Fabiano Caruana, who also won the…
no. 504
White to play. This is a possible variation from Meier-Carlsen, Grenke 2018. Meier could have forced a win in this…
First and last
In Competition No. 3046 you were invited to supply a poem beginning with the last line of any well-known poem…
2357: Half a Drum
Unclued lights make five pairs with something in common. Across 1 Fragrant nuts announced (5) 4 Neat workers secure…
to 2354: Pioneering
Parts indicated in clues in italics must each BREAK NEW GROUND (1A 4A), creating entries at 6, 13, 26, 39…
Here’s what every incel needs: a sex robot
In a recent blogpost, an American economics professor called Robin Hanson asked why it is that income inequality is regarded…
English cricket’s new tournament already looks doomed
Difficult to know quite what to make of The Hundred, which has the feel of being knocked up on the…
Dear Mary: A work colleague has a brain tumour — and his self pity is annoying me
Q. When buying a present for a friend, I would not dream of glugging from the bottle or helping myself…
It reeks of Alan Clark and the 1980s but all is forgiven for the food: Le Gavroche reviewed
Le Gavroche is named for ‘the urchin’ in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and lives in a basement on Upper Brook…
Terf wars and the ludicrous lexicon of feminist theory
Fiore de Henriquez, a sculptor, had a wonderfully high-windowed studio at the bottom of Cadogan Square, where I sometimes visited…
Business/Robbery etc
So what’s new? Twenty years ago, Westpac’s then boss, Bob Joss proclaimed: ‘Banks face shutting down entire divisions of business…
Australia under attack from political correctness
Douglas Murray in The Strange Death Of Europe argues that ‘Europe is committing suicide’ as a result of enemies within…
Potty Greens
The push for recreational cannabis legalisation in Australia has recently received energetic support from Dr Di Natale and his band…
Australian diary
The frustrating reality of public life is that there’s usually a lot less to show for it than the headlines…
