Immigration’s theatre of the absurd
On the cusp of an almighty row over Trump’s planned mass deportations, let’s look to Europe for light relief. Last…
Portrait of the week: Trump’s inauguration, Israel-Hamas ceasefire and cardboard humans comfort lonely fish
Home Axel Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty to the murder of three girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed…
The Pope’s revenge: why the new Archbishop of Washington is such a controversial choice
For an 88-year-old man who has spent only five days in the United States and doesn’t speak English, Pope Francis…
Charities are swapping altruism for activism
Charity no longer begins at home. It starts with a thunderous denunciation of western sins, promotes an excoriation of this…
Would it be worth Trump buying Greenland?
London’s capital market needs a kick in the pants, as I write every week, and ‘activist investors’ are no bad…
A classy potboiler – but it’s no Citizen Kane: The Brutalist reviewed
The Brutalist, which is a fictional account of a Jewish-Hungarian architect in postwar America, has attracted a great deal of…
Was Brazil the real birthplace of modernism?
A paradox of art history: to understand the artists of the past, it helps to study how, and where, they…
Certainly intriguing: Apple TV+’s Prime Target reviewed
Needless to say, there have been any number of thrillers that rely on what Alfred Hitchcock called a MacGuffin: something,…
Pious bilge: Kyoto, at @sohoplace, reviewed
The West End’s new political show, Kyoto, can’t be classed as a drama. A drama involves a main character engaged…
A jewel in the English National Ballet’s crown: Giselle reviewed
Since its première in Paris in 1841, Giselle has weathered a bumpy ride. For St Petersburg in 1884, Petipa gave…
It’s moving to think how happy Van Gogh was in Brixton
When a phrase really takes off in the political sphere, you will recognise it by the frequency with which it…
The crude tirades of Cicero the demagogue
Far from being a crusader for virtue, the Roman statesman is seen as a violent firebrand, disregarding the law when it suited him and laying the groundwork for Julius Caesar’s assassination
A committed performance of Lerner and Weill’s flop: Opera North’s Love Life reviewed
Once upon a time on Broadway, Igor Stravinsky composed a ballet for Billy Rose’s revue Seven Lively Arts. After the…
Never underestimate the complexities of African history
Too many commentators, Luke Pepera included, extrapolate from one region they know well to a continent boasting a multitude of religions, languages and ethnic roots
The secret of Gary Lineker’s success
The Leicester-born striker was neither exceptionally skilful nor assiduous; but he worked out how to score goals, and later excel in broadcasting, through intelligence and calm resilience
For all its fame, the Great Siege of Malta made no difference to the course of history
The victorious Hospitallers soon subsided into genteel irrelevance, while the Ottomans remained a formidable Mediterranean power for centuries to come
Confessions of a Costco Guy
Those who use TikTok, or are familiar with Ed Davey’s dance routines on social media, may have heard of the…
