Barometer
First through the exit Is Britain the first country to leave the EU? — As a full part of France,…
Diary
Last week’s events in London raised a recurrent dilemma for journalists, including me. It is a huge story when a…
Ballots and bullets
From ‘The golden opportunity’, 31 March 1917: The proposal not to give women votes till they are 26 might well be modified by…
Moving on
Most people are glad to see the end of a referendum campaign, but the losing side always wants to keep…
Australian letters
Heavy lifting Sir: James Delingpole needn’t worry (‘Where’s the due diligence on renewables’, 25 March). Malcolm Turnbull has finally found…
Portrait of the week
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, wrote a letter to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, with formal…
Australian notes
The Human Rights Commission must go Described by its leading victim, Bill Leak, as a ‘rogue totalitarian unit’, the Human…
Consider this…
IBM to back gay marriage postal vote? I presume that IBM (and every other corporation that backs gay marriage) would…
Orb
Photographs of contemporary dance can look like advertisements for underwear; frequently the dancers seem to be clad in their knickers.…
Smoker’s notes
Well, it’s finally happened. A life of debilitating asthma and six years of chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes have finally come to…
Conservative notes
O’Sullivan’s Law & the Ramsay Centre John O’Sullivan is a British journalist, one time editor of the US’s National Review,…
Terrorism notes
Nothing to do with Islam Westminster attacker acted alone and motive may never be known. Well, that settles it. That…
Lucky larrikins?
‘How lucky am I?’ It was Bill Leak’s catchcry, loudly and proudly proclaimed to anyone who happened to pop into…
Dreaming of wide open spaces
On the website of the Australian National University in Canberra, emeritus professor of history Barry Higman lists his research interests…
The sweet life turns sour
Shawn Levy specialises in chronicling 20th-century hotspots such as London in the Sixties and Sinatra’s Vegas. Here, he turns his…
The man who’s read everything
According to Martin Amis in The Information, the last person to have read every book ever published was Coleridge. Faced…
The saddest show on earth
It’s the early 20th century, and two strange-looking boys, purportedly twins named Iko and Eko, are playing in a circus…
Out of hot water
During and after the second world war the Fourteenth Army in Burma became famous as the Forgotten Army, almost as…
Back to basics
Tim Parks is a writer of some very fine books indeed, which makes it even more of a shame that…
A choice of recent thrillers
A young Norwegian police officer finds a rusting vintage car inside a locked and disused barn, and the presence of…
Who’s the expert now?
The title might be taken as a provocation. In the compressed language of digital media, white tears, like first-world problems…
Furry fury
Thanks to Henry Williamson and Gavin Maxwell I have spent hours in the company of otters, though I have only…
Welsh wizardry
When Stravinsky visited David Jones in his cold Harrow bedsit, he came away saying, ‘I have been in the presence…
The mad, bad war on ‘cultural appropriation’
It’s usually best to ignore the indignant fury of the 21st-century young. We’re used to them now, these snowflakes, posing…
Our dangerous impulse to make sense of murder
‘On Friday noon, July the 20th, 1714,’ begins the small, perfect 20th-century novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, ‘the…
