Cottaging in the age of Grindr
There are nights when, crossing the dark parkland by my house, I see a man beneath a remote streetlamp. He…
Politicians want to move us towards a cashless world. It would be a disaster
What could be more terrifying than a return to the 15 per cent interest rates with which homebuyers had to…
The English countryside on two wheels is like the best kind of poem
No seat belts. No airbags. Just air, and coming at you as fast as you like. Motorcycling shouldn’t be allowed,…
Is Jewish humour the greatest defence mechanism ever created?
If you’re Jewish, or Jew-ish, or merely subscribe to the view that Jews should be trusted to recognise anti-Semitism rather…
Caroline of Ansbach: the best of the Hanoverians
It can sometimes seem — unfairly but irresistibly — as if the sole function of the myriad Lilliputian German statelets…
The BBC’s battle for Britain
The camouflage-painted, smoke-blackened entrance to London’s 1940s Broadcasting House, moated with sandbags and battered by bombs, provided its staff with…
Sex and the city: the best art books of the year
‘I should like,’ Edgar Degas once remarked, ‘to be famous and unknown.’ On the whole, he managed to achieve this.…
Wonder is all around
Different people find different things impressive. Some claim, for instance, to experience a sense of wonder at the fact of…
Milton’s blinding reading list
In December 1996 Martin Amis told listeners of the BBC’s Desert Island Discs what would relieve his solitude were he…
Writer’s Letters: Ernest Hemingway on James Jones
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
A crime novel that continues to puzzle
His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet’s previous novel, had the sort of success that most authors and creative writing students…
Drugs and drag queens in New York’s vanished clubland
In 2014 Michael Alig, impresario, party promoter and drug provider, was released on parole after 17 years in prison for…
Composer Nico Muhly on drugs, cults and James MacMillan
There’s a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie in which Tippi Hedren is emptying a safe while a cleaning lady silently…
Baxter Dury on London going to the dogs, his acclaimed new album and his dad
In the last week of October, the middle-aged Baxter Dury and the boy Baxter Dury were brought together. The 45-year-old…
An overrated news satire directed by an inexplicably popular director: Network reviewed
The inexplicable popularity of Ivo Van Hove continues. The director’s latest visit to the fairies involves an updated version of…
Presenting a quiz is far from easy
It’s a weird sensation getting your child back for an extended period when for the previous decade you’ve been packing…
The Chinese classical-music revolution up close
On a bullet train out of Shanghai, a nuclear family catches my eye. The father, weather-beaten and wearing an ill-fitting…
Who will be the first woman on the moon?
Wally Funk is on a mission — to make real her dream that a woman will walk on the moon…
Like a Melanie Phillips column set to bad music: Morrissey’s Low in High School reviewed
Grade: B- It is truly painful to criticise someone who greatly enrages the Guardian and the leftie music press, and…
Musically superb but there isn’t a moment where one feels for anyone: Semiramide reviewed
The late arch-Rossinian Philip Gossett regarded Semiramide as a neoclassical work, vaguely and alarmingly suggesting to me a musical equivalent…
It will amply satisfy all your comeuppance needs: Battle of the Sexes reviewed
Battle of the Sexes recreates the famed, culture-changing 1973 tennis match between 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a self-proclaimed chauvinist, and 29-year-old…
Everyone’s doing a mea culpa these days — except me
The faux Leonardo that sold for 400 million greenbacks — plus a 50 million fee for Christie’s — was a…
Treble doubles, shattered glass and a copper on the doorstep
The door to Trev’s flat was open so I walked in and found him on the sofa watching TV. He…
Dr Google’s verdict? Anthrax poisoning
Six months into the renovations and I have so much dust in my lungs I have had to give Stefano…
My hot tips for the jump season
Richard Johnson may already have 100 winners in the bag, and Paul Nicholls may already have banked £750,000 worth of…
