Letters: Leave our soldiers alone
Military farce Sir: Your leading article (‘The age of realism’, 1 March) argues that the government must invest in the…
Cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci comic caper: Mickey 17 reviewed
Mickey 17 is the latest film from the South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho, who won an Oscar for Parasite and…
Why possum beats cashmere
In 1990, an exotic Swiss-Canadian teenager of purportedly Habsburgian lineage descended on Cambridge in a cloud of cashmere. His wardrobe…
Finneas has little to offer without his sister Billie Eilish
No truth is more self-evident than that there are those whose best emerges only when they are paired with others:…
How many people live in leasehold properties?
Back to the palace Donald Trump was invited for what will be his second state visit to the UK. Who…
The anti-genius of William McGonagall, history’s worst poet
‘Not marble nor the gilded monuments of princes,’ wrote Shakespeare, ‘shall outlive this powerful rhyme.’ To be a great poet,…
The MAGA movement is wrong on Ukraine
How can the right be so wrong? Or at least portions of the right – especially the American right –…
Why is the NHS pushing pregnant women towards sterilisation?
It was a routine antenatal appointment. I’d done it twice before and knew the format. The obstetrician runs through the…
Stop scoffing food on trains!
I’m on the 10.45 slow train to Ipswich. It’s not even lunchtime, yet everyone around me is already gorging on…
The Gen-Z fliers obsessed with maximising their air miles
Oscar, 26, joins me on Google Meet from Buenos Aires, having arrived earlier that day from New York – by…
Dirty deal: what Trump really wants from Ukraine’s natural resources
In Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Blondie, played by Clint Eastwood, and Tuco,…
Brian Cox’s Bach has to be heading for Broadway
The Score is a fine example of meat-and-potatoes theatre. Simple plotting, big characters, terrific speeches and a happy ending. The…
Starmer is the unlikely hero of the hour. Can it last?
When Donald Trump addressed Congress this week, he declared he was ‘just getting started’. His words will not have soothed…
The bully-boy tactics of Trump and J.D. Vance
Just before Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping announced a ‘friendship without limits’. The phrase seems…
My faux pas with Washington’s most eligible bachelorette
To the Queen Anne splendour of the British ambassador’s residence in Washington for Peter Mandelson’s welcome party as our man…
Portrait of the week: Zelensky at Sandringham, rail fare rise and Duchess of Sussex’s Chinese takeaways
Home After the humiliation of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Washington, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, quickly convened…
Trump has shifted the world in Putin’s favour
The verbal pummelling of Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House last week was an ugly moment of bitter truth. We…
I’m a culture war addict
Reading Melissa Lawford’s excellent analysis in the Sunday Telegraph, ‘Putin can’t afford peace – Russia’s economy is hooked on war’,…
The weakness of Donald Trump
Forgive the mordant tone, but this article was written in a desolate post-industrial nightmare girdled by diversionary roads going nowhere…
A blast: Leigh Bowery!, at Tate Modern, reviewed
Tate Modern’s latest exhibition is a bizarre proposition on so many levels. Its subject, the Australian designer, performer, provocateur and…
A dancing, weightless garland of gems: Stephen Hough’s piano concerto reviewed
Stephen Hough’s new piano concerto is called The World of Yesterday but its second ever performance offered a dispiriting glimpse…
The greatest paintings are always full of important unimportant things
Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, at the Courtauld, consists of a selection of 25 absorbing paintings…
The true birthplace of the Renaissance
The baby reaches out to touch his mother’s scarf: he studies her face intently, and she focuses entirely on him.…
