America

Did Ed Balls mean to make a documentary on the joys of Trump’s America?

4 August 2018 9:00 am

The thing I most regret having failed ever to ask brave, haunted, wise Sean O’Callaghan when I last saw him…

Australia’s choice: Chinese trade – or American security?

28 July 2018 9:00 am

 Sydney For decades, Australia has been known as ‘the lucky country’. At the end of the world geographically, we are…

Can you prove you’re not a racist?

31 March 2018 9:00 am

After an essay in this month’s Prospect about literature and freedom of speech, it seems I was cited on Twitter…

Michael Moorcock: Why banning opioids has been a disaster for me

10 February 2018 9:00 am

Returning to the United States a short while ago I received a stern talking to from an immigration officer. Why…

As a musical, it’s overwhelming – politically, it’s an outrage: Hamilton reviewed

6 January 2018 9:00 am

It’s all about the rhythm. Hamilton is a musical that tells the story of America’s foundation through the medium of…

Despite everything, America is beautiful — especially at West Point

18 November 2017 9:00 am

What is left to say after the church shooting in the Home of the Depraved? Those killed in Texas included…

Woman of a thousand voices

30 September 2017 9:00 am

‘On air, I could be the most glamorous, gorgeous, tall, black-haired female… Whatever I wanted to be, I could be……

Do what they do, not what they say

16 September 2017 9:00 am

Last month, two law professors named Amy Wax and Larry Alexander published a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer praising ‘bourgeois’…

Male order

9 September 2017 9:00 am

The starting point for Taylor Sheridan’s crime-thriller Wind River is explicitly stated at the end when the following words come…

Low life

2 September 2017 9:00 am

I arrived for lunch a bit late and was led to the dining table. Our hostess disappeared back into the…

High life

5 August 2017 9:00 am

I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super…

Scabrous and sarcastic: singer-songwriter Randy Newman

His dark materials

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Randy Newman is already struggling to keep up with himself. His dazzling new album, Dark Matter, was written before the…

Scabrous and sarcastic: singer-songwriter Randy Newman

His dark materials

3 August 2017 1:00 pm

Randy Newman is already struggling to keep up with himself. His dazzling new album, Dark Matter, was written before the…

An airborne early warning system leads fighter jets during a military parade in Beijing

China syndrome

15 July 2017 9:00 am

Every day on his way to work at Harvard, Professor Allison wondered how the reconstruction of the bridge over Boston’s…

Beth Ditto: Fake Sugar

8 July 2017 9:00 am

Boy is she fat, and getting fatter. I realise this is something we’re not meant to mention when talking about…

The monkey-brained case for Donald Trump

4 June 2016 9:00 am

A few years ago I was asked to speak at a conference in New York. ‘Where would be the best…

Even fruitcakes and fascists are more popular than the flaccid centre

28 May 2016 9:00 am

A depression has settled on the Liddle household ever since Norbert Hofer narrowly failed in his bid to become the…

The view from New York tells me that Trump can win it

21 May 2016 9:00 am

   New York I have never seen anything like it. If Adolf Hitler were running for president, he would match…

Long may we Brits laugh at our absurd demagogues

23 April 2016 9:00 am

In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke warned that ‘pure democracy’ was as dangerous as absolute monarchy. ‘Of…

Millepied’s final spring programme for the Paris Opera Ballet is brazenly American

9 April 2016 9:00 am

Paris Opera Ballet plays hard to get. It doesn’t deign to travel all the way over here, thanks to a…

Catherine Tate’s talents are wasted on this meandering musical about nuclear fallout

26 March 2016 9:00 am

Miss Atomic Bomb celebrates the sub-culture that grew up around nuclear tests in 1950s America. The citizens of Nevada would…

Sister act: Zawe Ashton and Uzo Aduba in Jean Genet’s ‘The Maids’

Jean Genet’s fascinating play, The Maids, is botched at Trafalgar Studios

19 March 2016 9:00 am

The Maids is a fascinating document. Written in 1947, Jean Genet’s drama portrays a pair of serving girls who enact…

Donald Trump's angry America

5 March 2016 9:00 am

Welcome to Trump’s America, where greed is great and viciousness beautiful

America would never join anything like the EU. Yet they urge us to stay

20 February 2016 9:00 am

America is urging Britain to stay in the European Union. But it would never dream of joining a comparable organisation

Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugo Glass

I admired it - but also desperately wanted it to end: The Revenant reviewed

16 January 2016 9:00 am

The Revenant is a survival-against-the-odds film that so puts Leonardo DiCaprio through it I bet he was thinking, ‘I wish…