Letters
Pastel atrocity Sir: I note that Professor Flint (‘Constitutional Notes’, 5 August) neglects to mention what is surely the strongest…
Australian notes
On my first visit to Darwin twenty odd years ago to cover the annual Aboriginal art awards a number of…
Brown study
I was absolutely thrilled to read that Senator Arthur Sinodinos will not be prosecuted by the New South Wales Independent…
Simon Collins
Perhaps there were plans for some tax-payer-funded, public service web content with a catchy, kid-friendly slogan: ‘From eleven to three,…
Nice is overrated
It’s time that conservatives stopped being so damn nice and finally decided to stand up for what they believe in…
Why is your holiday exchange rate so awful? Because investors see hope for the eurozone
As usual for August, I’m in France, where the news in brief is ‘Euro up, Macron down’. The youthful French…
The romantic king of clubs
We were discussing romanticism, with me arguing that it should be confined to the boudoir, the bedroom, the library or…
Watching from the wings
The story of Sweetpea Slight is a footnote to a footnote in the annals of British theatre. Even her name…
A clash of creeds
This is a very modern novel. Terrorist atrocity sits side by side with the familiar and the mundane. Where better…
Flights of fancy
Levitation. We all know what it is: the ‘disregard for gravity’, as Peter Adey puts it in his new book,…
Wool, wheat and wet weather
Englishness is big business in the nation of shopkeepers, and not just in politics and tourism. In literature, the gypsy…
A feminist trailblazer
On the evening of 28 October 1908, two unremarkable middle-class women wearing heavy overcoats gained admission to the Ladies’ Gallery,…
The German Lion of Africa
What’s going on with book reviews? Here is the Pulitizer prizewinning (for ‘criticism’) Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, on…
Holidays with Hitler
We don’t usually think of Hitler’s hated henchman Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Holocaust of European Jewry, as a comic…
The violence of poverty
Neel Mukherjee has had a two-handed literary career, working as a reviewer of other people’s novels and writing his own.…
A dazzling vision
There are a number of reports by his contemporaries of Thomas Gainsborough at work. They make you realise what a…
Jesus in the playground
It emerged last fortnight that Queensland’s Department of Education wants to ban primary school students from talking about Jesus. Kate…
Our survey proves just how horrible you are
This month the Australian Human Rights Commission lied to the nation. And it knows it did. It told Australians that…
Time to toughen up
Conservatives will never turn back the leftist tide swamping our society unless they adopt the techniques the Left uses to…
The abuse of Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins may not have too many fans within the ranks of Christianity. Throughout his public career he has been…
Cold temperatures in hot water
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) is in hot water after revelations that have cast doubt on the reliability and veracity…
Diary
No sympathy from me for the Brits stuck in the European heatwave. I’ve never understood people who go abroad for…
Same sex notes
Hang the Senate: let the people decide However much he has foolishly encouraged it, the Prime Minister cannot tolerate…
Bridge
The Andrew Robson Bridge Club in Parsons Green deserves its huge success. The standard may not be as high as…
Test of time
Last week I pointed to the fact that games played at accelerated time limits are acquiring an official imprimatur that…
