The Tories’ real dilemma? To spend or not to spend
While the rest of the country waits for this spring to arrive, in Westminster the talk is all of spring…
Why are businesses like Center Parcs so terrified of a small minority?
I am boycotting Center Parcs. Admittedly, this is not going to have an enormous impact upon my life. It’s a…
Even being pro-Trump didn’t lose me as many friends as being pro-Brexit
When I mentioned on social media recently that I’d lost friends because of Brexit, I was quite surprised by the…
Investors were right to sell Carillion shares when they spotted trouble ahead
The fallout from Carillion’s bankruptcy spreads in slow motion — just as the outsourcing and construction giant’s finances gradually stretched…
Angela Merkel has created Germany’s far-right
Bankruptcy, wrote Ernest Hemingway, happens in two ways — ‘gradually and then suddenly’. By now, Angela Merkel will be beginning…
Meet ‘AKK’, Angela Merkel’s anointed successor
On Monday, Angela Merkel did something quite extraordinary. As speculation about her party’s leadership mounted, she named an apparent successor:…
Wham bam, thank you Ma’am
I love Americans’ kindness, generosity and energy but am often thrown by their exaggerated politeness and euphemistic speech. They use…
The NHS’s internal market is an expensive catastrophe
The NHS is in dire straits. I never thought I’d say this but as a doctor, and having seen the…
Oxfam’s troubles began when it became politically correct
In the early 1980s when I was a schoolboy, my father, Brian Hartley, worked for Oxfam during a famine in…
Never mind Russia – the real threat to the US is China
One of the most memorable moments of the 2012 presidential debates came when the candidates were asked what they believed…
South Africa Notebook: After Zuma’s fall, and life on the Little Karoo
In recent years, living in South Africa has been a bit like having cancer. The malaise eating us from within…
Majestic Vienna makes a point of selling the right kind of celebrity
Two things always strike me when I visit Vienna. The first is how easterly the city lies. This was more…
Debussy: the musical genius who erupted out of nowhere
At the end of his study of Debussy, Stephen Walsh makes the startling, but probably accurate, claim that musical revolutionaries…
Laura Freeman reads her way out of anorexia
It is hard to be honest about anorexia. The illness breeds deceit and distortion: ‘It thrives on looking-glass logic. It…
Is Tegucigalpa the crime capital of the world?
The Spanish journalist Alberto Arce worked for Associated Press in Honduras in 2012 and 2013. After a year, he says:…
The Adulterants: a caustic take on London’s brutal property market
Often a blurb exaggerates, but rarely does it fundamentally misrepresent (unless it contains the words ‘In the tradition of…’). The…
Spain has effectively obliterated Franco’s memory
Spanish restaurants in Germany are relatively rare, but not nearly as rare as biographies of General Franco. So when the…
The body count piles up in Mick Herron’s London Rules
The well-written spy novel is not a hotly contested field. Le Carré, Fleming, Deighton, a few Greenes, and that’s largely…
The Book of Joan: part apocalyptic tale, part erotic poem
Does J.G. Ballard’s ‘disquieting equation’, ‘sex x technology = the future’, still hold? Not in Lidia Yuknavitch’s novel, which imagines…
The pioneering artist whose creations vanished before his eyes
The impermanence of works of art is a worry for curators though not usually for artists, especially not at the…
Worth a trip for the David Joneses alone: Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ reviewed
To bleak, boarded-up Margate — and a salt-and-vinegar wind that leaves my face looking like Andy Warhol’s botched 1958 nose-peel…
A mischievous, daring production that produces the goods: Iolanthe reviewed
‘Welcome to our hearts again, Iolanthe!’ sings the fairy chorus in Gilbert and Sullivan’s fantasy-satire, and during this exuberant new…
Edison decried the electric recording as a mere ‘volume fad’
Listen closely, among the shelves of the last remaining music shops, in student dorm rooms and amid the flat whites…
The captivating art, science and politics of hair: Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries reviewed
One of the best things about Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries — yep, an exhibition about hairdressing — is the reaction…
The York Realist feels like it’s been written by a newcomer at a creative writing weekend
The Donmar’s new show, The York Realist, dates from 2001. The programme notes tell us that the playwright, Peter Gill,…
