Roving eye
Photography has many genres, even more than painting, and most photographers achieve fame by focusing on one of them. There…
Moment of truth
Two extremes of the listening experience were available on Monday on Radio 4. The day began conventionally enough with Start…
An artist of the quickening world
What is it about Yorkshire, particularly Leeds, that it has bred or trained such a succession of famous modern sculptors?…
Police force
I’ve often thought that a good idea for an authentic TV cop show would be to portray the police as…
‘Our children are horrified’
Wrexham, North Wales To window cleaner Andrew Atkinson, Theresa May’s ‘blue-collar Conservatism’ is not just a slogan. It’s what…
This is an emergency
The NHS as we know it is dying. It’s no longer a matter of if it will collapse, but when.…
Middle May
Once, politicians remained in their safe spaces and elections were fought in a handful of swing seats. This time Theresa…
Throw in the towel
Spas are supposed to be relaxing. You pad around in a regulation robe and too-big slippers. Everything is beautifully soft,…
Life in a gulag
I was invited to Moscow earlier this year to give a talk about my latest book. But while I was…
Red Theresa
Never has the Conservative party been more confident about winning a general election. Theresa May’s popularity ratings have broken all…
False start
When a composer begins an opera, they create a world. You don’t need a full-scale overture: the tear-stained violins that…
Killing time
Jez Butterworth’s new play The Ferryman is set in Armagh in 1981. Quinn, a former terrorist, has swapped the armed…
Venice diary
The Biennale The Venice Biennale has been a rite of every second spring since 1895. The oldest biennial art fair…
Lost in translation
In Competition No. 2998 you were invited to submit a set of instructions for an everyday device that have been…
Constitutional Amendment
Unclued lights are six characters from 45 and its author. Five of these undergo 45 in one way before entry;…
2307: Obit IV
On 18 March 2017 the great ROCK’N’ROLLER (3) Chuck Berry died. Round the perimeter run the titles of four of…
Dear Mary
Q. My mother always told me that only boring people are bored. However she never got stuck at a drinks…
The city of ugly love
Cuba’s gorgeous, crumbling capital has always been a testing ground for writers. That heady combination of revolution, cocktails, sex and…
French fancies
‘That sweet enemy, France.’ It takes a poet to summarise centuries of military and diplomatic history. On a prosaic level,…
Fallen idols
David Hepworth is such a clever writer — not just clever in the things he writes, but in the way…
A brave new world – at gunpoint
Of the many books published this year to mark the centenary of the Russian revolution, this is perhaps the most…
Gold and dust
Timbuktu. Can any other three syllables evoke such a thrill? For travellers, explorers and historians of Africa, the ancient desert…
Not-so-sweet 16
I like novelists who don’t try to do everything in their novels, but just to do something well. This is…
Escapism for boys
Jack Higgins’s writing routine was said to start with dinner at his favourite Italian restaurant in Jersey, followed by writing…
No ordinary judge
Justice McCardie was anything but a conventional High Court judge. He left school at 15 and was called to the…
