Deranged and fantastic horrors
For a century King Lear has been thought of as the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies and the title role as…
Aussie life
Imagine if, instead of returning to the USA to become its third president, Thomas Jefferson had died in France on…
Language
A fellow Speccie writer asked me about what he called the ‘absurd equivalence’ being drawn between ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘Islamophobia’. He…
Beware the bat police
My friend Andrew is angry. He has just had the bat people round to look at his building project in…
Jack White’s new album will be of close interest to Led Zeppelin’s legal team
The ploy of releasing an album without any advance warning comes into play when an artist feels they are being…
Will the real Kamala Harris please stand up?
About five minutes ago, the one Democrat more certain to lose to Donald Trump than Joe Biden was his widely…
The summer of Brat
The singer Charli XCX (or ‘Ninety Ten’ as my husband insists on pronouncing it) has endorsed Kamala Harris, in a…
Save our grey belt!
While working as a callow speechwriter for the Labour party in the mid-1980s, I suggested to a member of the…
Let prisoners phone home
‘A society is measured by the treatment of its prisoners,’ Winston Churchill said. Last year, in England and Wales, every…
Who’ll be blamed for Rachel Reeves’s tax hikes?
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt entered Downing Street with one mission: to clean up the public finances after Liz Truss’s…
Keir Starmer’s plans to soften Brexit
Anew political bromance is brewing on the continent. Keir Starmer has met Olaf Scholz, his German counterpart, three times since…
Welcome to the new global theocracy
I had a revelation while watching the Olympics opening ceremony. It was during the infamous section that I (and almost…
Rachel Reeves has proved that strikes pay
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were adamant that economic growth would be their first priority in government. It is hard…
Nothing beats a 1980s brick phone
In the late 1980s, a story entered advertising folklore. A group from an ad agency had boarded an evening train…
When in doubt, have a drink
Most Tory MPs enjoy leadership elections. There may be an element of what the trick-cyclists call ‘displacement activity’. Equally, it…
Forget the Proms and Edinburgh – the Three Choirs Festival is where it’s at
The Proms have started but there is a world elsewhere, and in Worcester Cathedral the 296th Three Choirs Festival set…
We’ve been doing a monstrous disservice to goldfish
As everyone knows, Londoners don’t talk to strangers. And heaven forbid that anyone should make eye contact on the Tube.…
The cult of Bedales
Another of my ageing Bedales school cohort has died and so there’s an ad hoc reunion in his honour at…
