All Change
Based on a handwritten notebook of recipes from Dorothy Eliza Barnes, my grandmother, a shepherd’s wife, who had worked as…
December
The ferns around the badgers’ sett are dying down, and fine webs fret the brambles. By late afternoon the moon…
Bridge
2015 leaves many bridge players with mixed emotions. I have played in more wonderful, high-level tournaments than ever before (Iceland,…
Yes, Virginia
Virginia, your little conservative friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do…
Ye who now will bless the poor Shall yourselves find blessing
I thought you might enjoy a little parable for Christmas, so here goes… The boardroom clock said twelve minutes…
If you believe the internet, I was the Israeli army’s answer to Jason Bourne
One of the strangest and, in a weird way, best things to have happened to me in the past year…
Will you survive the Delingpole Era? See below…
Things I am going to ban when, by popular acclaim, I am elected your Dictator For Life in 2016.…
Am I a brave cult survivor, too?
When I was 21, I lived with a cult for a year. It was a commune really, a tight-knit group…
The question Christianity fails to answer: ‘Who is my neighbour?’
‘Fine old Christmas,’ wrote George Eliot, ‘with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in…
Exit strategy vs stay-in power
By this time next year Britain will, if the government has its way, have voted on whether or not this…
Was my article the inspiration for this brilliant BBC dramatisation?
The two things I hate most about Christmas are a) Advertland showing me how sparkly and joyous my home and…
The Heckler: those who doubt the brilliance of Phil Collins are snobs
Three boos for those rotten spoilsports who started an online petition against Phil Collins coming out of retirement (there’s already…
The Heckler: those who doubt the brilliance of Phil Collins are snobs
Three boos for those rotten spoilsports who started an online petition against Phil Collins coming out of retirement (there’s already…
Hug, hold hands . . . then stampede to the right
What a pleasure it was to see two socialist parties triumph in the most recent elections. First, Labour increased its…
New word order
Peter Robins reports on a site-specific transformation of The Unfortunates by the literary innovator B.S. Johnson
In a class of their own
Plus: at Pallant House Gallery, several masterpieces by the unclassifiable David Jones
Men behaving badly
Plus: Patrick Marmion has created a bleakly hilarious account of rock-star psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s at the Arcola
The still point
The lyricism of director Terence Davies is unlike the work of any other British director and worth celebrating
There will be blood
Plus: Radio 3’s Northern Lights season begins with the broadcast of a classic 1967 ‘contrapuntal radio documentary’ by Glenn Gould
Beyond a joke
Plus: two properly great sitcoms, Detectorists and Catastrophe, reach the end of their second series
George and Martha Washington were an odd first First Couple
But the towering general and his diminutive, homely wife were devoted to one another, as Flora Fraser reveals in her dual biography
Hubris made the 20th century the bloodiest in history
Alistair Horne’s survey of 20th-century warfare illustrates how often daring didn’t win
General Anders to the rescue
Norman Davies tells the stirring tale of the ragtag Polish army that marched thousands of miles to aid the Allies at a critical juncture of the second world war
