How they tried (and failed) to make ‘La Marseillaise’ nicer
Friendly words England football fans sang ‘La Marseillaise’ in a friendly match at Wembley. The anthem has not always been…
Ian Rankin’s diary: Paris, ignoring Twitter and understanding evil
After ten days away, I spent last Friday at home alone, catching up on washing, shopping for cat food, answering…
The French way of war
From ‘The Example of France’, The Spectator, 20 November 1915: France is an example to the world and to posterity…
Portrait of the week
Home After the killings in Paris, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that seven terrorist attacks on Britain had been…
Artificial life
One day Julia Margaret Cameron was showing John Ruskin a portfolio of her photographic portraits. The critic grew more and…
Sins of the fathers
This is a documentary in which three men travel across Europe together, but they’re not pleasurably interrailing, even though there…
Ménage à trois
Mark Baldwin, artistic director of Rambert Dance, must take responsibility for most of the good times I’ve had recently, midwife…
Death watch
At the beginning of the summer of 1715 Louis XIV complained of a pain in the leg. In mid-August gangrene…
Bored by Brahms
Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet begins, writes his biographer Jan Swafford, with ‘a gentle, dying-away roulade that raises a veil of autumnal…
Bored by Brahms
Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet begins, writes his biographer Jan Swafford, with ‘a gentle, dying-away roulade that raises a veil of autumnal…
Approachable abstraction
Fifteen million pounds and a hefty slice of architectural vision have transformed the Whitworth from a fusty Victorian art temple…
Approachable abstraction
Fifteen million pounds and a hefty slice of architectural vision have transformed the Whitworth from a fusty Victorian art temple…
Thomas Heatherwick
Thomas Heatherwick is the most famous designer in the United Kingdom today and has an unquestionable flair for attention-grabbing creations.…
Thomas Heatherwick
Thomas Heatherwick is the most famous designer in the United Kingdom today and has an unquestionable flair for attention-grabbing creations.…
Winter wonderland
Kenneth Branagh opens his West End tenancy with Shakespeare’s inexplicably popular The Winter’s Tale. We start in Sicily where Leontes…
Winter wonderland
Kenneth Branagh opens his West End tenancy with Shakespeare’s inexplicably popular The Winter’s Tale. We start in Sicily where Leontes…
French connection
It was as if Andrew Marr and his guests on Start the Week on Monday morning were standing on the…
French connection
It was as if Andrew Marr and his guests on Start the Week on Monday morning were standing on the…
Paris diary
Earlier in the week I’d been in London, Oxford, Dublin and Brussels for a series of meetings and speaking commitments.…
Bridge
Bravissimo! The Italians have won gold yet again at the European Champions Cup. The event was launched in 2002, and…
What to do?
First, let’s list the obscenities, of which there have been so many (not including, of course, the Parisian atrocities themselves).…
The view from my Belfast bus: tribalism as the enemy of prosperity
At Stormont on Saturday, we observed a minute’s silence for the dead of Paris. Our conference group of Brits and…
There’s a right way to lose at the Oxford Union. I did the wrong way
The way not to win a debate at the Oxford Union, I’ve just discovered, is to start your speech with…
Obama’s failure is Putin’s opportunity
Listen http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/parisattacksaftermath/media.mp3 The principal strategic objective in the war on terror has been a failure. Ever since 9/11, the aim…
