Labour, lizards and the problem of anti-Semitism
There’s a very funny moment in Jon Ronson’s book Them: Adventures with Extremists, part of which follows the New Age…
Can you prove you’re not a racist?
After an essay in this month’s Prospect about literature and freedom of speech, it seems I was cited on Twitter…
So farewell Toys ‘R’ Us, the predator that became the prey
I remember the arrival of Toys ‘R’ Us in Britain, because as a young banker in 1984 I was tasked…
How to rig an election
Andrés Sepúlveda sleeps behind bombproof doors in a maximum-security prison in central Bogota, Colombia. When travelling to judicial hearings or…
Revealed: Cambridge Analytica and the Passport King
The Cambridge Analytica story is full of hot air. Everybody delights in talking about how scary Facebook is, and lots…
When will the West take a stand on the persecution of Muslims?
Anti-Christian persecution, for so long a great untold story, has started to gain the world’s attention. But the suffering of…
Why my generation is indifferent to anti-Semitism
It took a protest of Jews in Westminster for Jeremy Corbyn to own up to the Labour party’s problem with…
A tale of two Sarahs: the cuddly bishop vs the terrifying cardinal
If you’re looking for a snapshot of the state of global Christianity today, a good place to start would be…
I averted the wrath of the students by telling them I’d had a sex change
I went to Australia with my constant companion Hilary, the only woman in England I’m not paying alimony to. She…
Monet painted London not brick-by-brick, but light-by-shade
The Savoy was too sumptuous, complained Claude Monet, returning to the hotel in 1904. His rooms — one for sleeping,…
How Christianity saw off its rivals and became the universal church
In the reign of Constantine, whose conversion to Christianity in AD 310 set the entire Roman world on a course…
Think of five things you use daily that weren’t made in a factory
Industrial factories huddle at the very edge of our world view. Most of us have never visited one, but we…
Cockney comfort food: eel, pie and mash to the sound of Bow bells
Cockney feet mark the beat of history, sang Noël Coward, as if he had ever been east of Holborn. Yet…
First wife, enduring love: the passionate affair of John Osborne and Pamela Lane
Look Back in Anger, John Osborne’s 1956 play, was a fertile cultural seedbed: out of it sprouted the Angry Young…
Who knew that Arabic has more than 30 words for wine?
You know you’re in good hands when the dedication reads: ‘To the writers, drinkers and freethinkers of the Arab and…
False confessions to murder in 1970s Iceland
Everyone in Iceland has heard of Gudmunder and Geirfinnur. They were two (unrelated) men who disappeared in 1974, albeit ten…
I’m in danger of becoming a flat-mind bore
Reading The Mind is Flat is like watching The Truman Show and realising, while you’re watching it, that you are…
Love and loneliness prevail in the latest short stories
Carmen Maria Machado’s debut collection Her Body & Other Parties (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99) takes a confident straddle across speculative fiction,…
Simplicius Simplicissimus and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War
On 23 May 1618, Bohemian Protestants pushed two Catholic governors and their secretary through the windows of Prague Castle, in…
The loveliest episode of Holy Week – Christ rises from the potting shed
In Nicolas Poussin’s ‘Noli Me Tangere’ (1653) Christ stands with his heel on a spade. He appears, in his rough…
How Debussy slipped past Wagner into the unknown
A spectre haunted the first weekend of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Debussy Festival: the spectre of Richard Wagner.…
It was good but I preferred slurping my genitals: Deborah’s dog reviews Isle of Dogs
The latest film from Wes Anderson is a doggy animation set in a fantasy Japan and as there was a…
The glorious history of Chatham Dockyard, as told through the eyes of artists
‘Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG, Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG!’ is how Charles Dickens…
Paradise Lost is made for radio – but you need to concentrate
It’s a tough listen, Paradise Lost on Radio 4 at the weekend. In bold defiance of the demands of a…
Are the French right to be obsessed with their Gaulish ancestry?
This book reminded me of Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland — but where Andersen thinks only Americans have lost their minds, David…