Girls aloud
Plus: to call Notes from Underground an artistic catastrophe would be to praise it too highly
See it and sleep
Compared to The Best of Me, Northern Soul may be a masterpiece - which is not saying much
Radio Three-fall
Plus: if only they ploughed their money into shows like The Verb - rather than doing grandstanding live relays
Bridge
The EBU’s Premier League is upon us again, the pain of relegation ever-present as my team battles it out in…
Tigran Tigran
Tigran Petrosian seized the world championship from Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963, defended the title against Boris Spassky in 1966 and…
No. 336
White to play. This is from Petrosian-Rosetto, Portoroz 1958. White’s knight is threatened and appears to lack a safe escape…
Spooner verse
In Competition No. 2869 you were invited to submit a poem on any theme as it might have been written…
2184: Airline
Nine unclued lights each contain a different 20 from the same source. The title suggests a further such 20. Elsewhere,…
To 2181: Obit II
The END (19) of Rameau, a great COMPOSER (1A) of OPERAS (6) and for the CLAVECIN (1D), occurred in PARIS…
Pietersen’s unlikely Passage to India
England’s management failed over dressing-room bullying and the fake KP Twitter account
Colonial cringe
It’s revolting in the same way that eating in homage to apartheid South Africa or to commemorate the genocide of native Americans is revolting
Getting shirty
Several recent events highlight the fragile faultlines between jingoism, patriotism and national security; a fissure that the Left are desperate…
Now it’s the tranny-state
The transgender community have become masters (er, mistresses?) of intolerance and offence-taking
