Trump’s forgotten people
The fit, or fugue, that Hillary Clinton suffered during a 9/11 memorial service in Manhattan on Sunday left mysteries in…
Bad grammar
It is almost mandatory, if you want to discuss grammar schools, to swap personal histories. Here’s mine: I am the…
High life
I’m jittery and fragile but free of plaster and in the dojo, slowly turning lean and muscular. Never listen to…
Hush money
The new consumer obsession of my generation isn’t white goods, trainers or designer labels. It is — whisper it —…
Brown study
One day when I was a member of the federal parliament, a surprising thing happened to me. Until then, if…
Archers abusers
It’s been going on for months now and I must make a confession. I secretly endure a nightly battering in…
Simon Collins
Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Agri, Big Pharma… every industry these days seems to have its bogeyman collective, the theory…
Yemen Notebook
Most nights Saudi bombers fly low over the Yemeni capital of Sanaa dealing out random destruction. High up in the…
Chinese puzzle
As I write, the final results of the Baku Olympiad are still not in. England are fighting for a possible…
Aga can’t
Earlier this year my partner paid several hundred thousand pounds for an Aga. There’s no other way of putting it.…
to 2275: Frame of reference
Corrections of misprints in clues give CHAMBERS DICTIONARY, defining the items in the perimeter. First prize David Heath, Euston, Newark…
London’s lost rivers
I found my first of London’s many lost rivers when I walked across Holborn Viaduct, looked down at the sweep…
In a Birmingham jail, I found the point of Michael Gove
I went to prison last week, in Birmingham. Early start, off on a train from Euston. It was my kids’…
Come in, but keep your voices down
The illustrated manuscripts of the European Middle Ages are among the most beautiful works to survive from a maligned and…
Portrait of the week
Home Schools in England would have the right to select pupils by ability, under plans outlined by Theresa May, the…
Monet’s great war effort
Claude Monet wanted to be buried in a buoy. ‘This idea seemed to please him,’ his friend Gustave Geffroy wrote.…
Long life
It’s been a very patriotic weekend, ablaze with Union flags. In London there was the Last Night of the Proms…
The power of the American oligarchs
Talk about plutocracy and oligarchy has become commonplace in America, as the billionaire class grows ever richer and seemingly more…
Defending Dave’s legacy
It is too early to tell what sort of Prime Minister Theresa May will turn out to be, but we…
Twists and turns of the Italian campaign
When Rome fell to the Allies on 5 June 1944 General Harold Alexander, commander of the 15th Army, calculated that…
Power to the plebiscite
Malcolm Turnbull’s shilly-shallying before deciding to go ahead with the gay ‘marriage’ plebiscite is what we have come to expect…
One long moanfest
Tama Janowitz’s memoir is a relentlessly cheerless and bitter collection of vignettes. Between tales of her purportedly miserly, creepy and…
We’re all gamblers now
We are a nation of gamblers. We wager more per capita than any other country on earth. But it is…
Too, too shy-making
You might have thought that the last thing shy people need is a book about shyness: a large part of…
