The way the imagination works
Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…
Aussie life
The evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad once described woke as a mind virus. For the past decade, Western intellectual and cultural…
Language
At the end of this year (as every year) the dictionaries of the world will announce their choice for ‘word…
Is there ever a good time to discuss the care of the elderly?
The young are too busy enjoying themselves, the middle-aged are loath to initiate it and the elderly themselves can’t always take part, but it’s a subject sorely in need of public discourse
The Chinese tried to get me drunk
China: what next? Around the time of the millennium, I wrote that during this century, many of the world’s great…
Can Trump keep me on side?
I’m in danger of falling out of love with Donald Trump. I was ecstatic when he beat Kamala Harris, delighted…
Dear Mary: Is it acceptable to go to bed before my guests do?
Q. I am a self-employed travel specialist, concentrating on holidays in Asia. Friends (and even friends of friends) plague me…
The unsayable case for cars
Rob Henderson is justly famous for coining the phrase ‘luxury beliefs’. These are opinions which are unshakeably held irrespective of…
How I found Christianity
I wasn’t brought up in the faith. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist lay-preacher, but when my mother left County…
Admit it: Creme Eggs are vile
Every Easter, the Creme Egg dominates supermarket shelves. It is, Cadbury’s marketing department loves to remind us, ‘the nation’s favourite…
Lamb is for life, not just for Easter
Roast lamb is as expected on the Easter table as turkey is at Christmas. But as a nation, we are…
Only Hitler could have brought the disparate Allies together
Their collaboration was riven by secret deals and betrayals, with Roosevelt suspicious of Churchill and Stalin suspicious of everyone, but all purporting to be great friends
Dangerous games of cat and mouse: a choice of crime fiction
A sadistic octogenarian meets her match in a malevolent eight-year-old at a Luxor hotel. Thrillers by Christopher Bollen, Henry Wise, Charlotte Philby and Cristina Rivera Garza reviewed
The boy who would be king: The Pretender, by Jo Harkin, reviewed
A magnificent imagining of the life of Lambert Simnel traces his progress from farm boy to coronation in Dublin to turnspit in the Tudor palace kitchens to plans of dark revenge
The mystical masterpiece from Stalag VIII-A
A meditation on Quartet for the End of Time, Oliver Messiaen’s great prison camp composition, should bring the strange, bird-fixated religious avant-gardist new admirers
