Aussie life
I’ve just watched Senator Fatima Payman’s performative ‘I quit but not really, I’m moving to the crossbenches’ media conference. It…
Language
Angry people keep chanting ‘Free Palestine’ on our streets. They shout that ‘Palestine’ should stretch from the Jordan River to…
How safe do you feel boarding a Boeing?
‘They knocked down our old house in three hours,’ says a friend who has embarked on what he says is…
48 hours of food in Andalusia
In Spain, you can eat all day – and we did. Earlier in the summer, I spent two days in…
The new dark age
We have entered a new dark age. I’m not just referring to the situation in Britain since last week. Though…
The cult of the water bottle
The water bottle is no longer just a water bottle. It is a status symbol. It is an extension of…
Murray shouldn’t have relied on injury-prone Raducanu
Talk about raging against the dying of the light: Andy Murray and President Biden both. Murray because he is no…
Dear Mary: is it rude to listen to sport at a wedding?
Q. We live in the countryside, where the door is always open. Last week when it was sunny we had…
Next time, I’m swimming to Calais
Friends in Calais invited me to their baby’s birthday party. He’s a year old. They suggested an overnight stay and…
Utterly bog-standard: BBC2’s The Turkish Detective reviewed
A partly subtitled show set in Istanbul might sound like a brave departure for a BBC Sunday night crime drama.…
Acceptable for a hangover day: Fly Me to the Moon reviewed
Fly Me to the Moon is a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum set during the 1960s space…
Sparky and often hilarious: Garsington’s Un giorno di regno reviewed
Hang out with both trainspotters and opera buffs and you’ll soon notice that opera buffs are by far the more…
Unmissable – for professors of gender studies: Alma Mater, at the Almeida Theatre, reviewed
Alma Mater is a topical melodrama set on a university campus. The new principal, Jo, (amusingly played by Justine Mitchell)…
The beauty of pollution
On the back of the British £20 note, J.M.W. Turner appears against the backdrop of his most iconic image. Voted…
Drama on the London Underground
The girl lay slumped against a wall in front of me and someone ran to push the emergency button. I…
Notes from a bomb site
Kyiv For weeks, Kyiv had felt relatively safe compared with just about everywhere else in Ukraine. People had adjusted to…
Can Labour solve our prisons crisis?
There is no doubt that the new government (and in particular the prisons minister, James Timpson) is faced with a…
The great bee-smuggling scandal
The principal concerns of the electors vary rather more widely than the pollsters and pundits would suggest. One man in…
Trade like a tradwife
I love to complain about my phone. It has ruined everything, from friendships to childhood to my memory. But if…
Starmer must move fast without losing his head
When Keir Starmer’s Labour party gathered on Monday to celebrate their election victory, the difficulty was finding a big enough…
