America
Good cop, bad cop
One of the most shocking items of recent news has been the bald statistic that the number of people shot…
Aural wonderland
My resolution this New Year is to get to grips with podcasts, to brace up and embrace this new aural…
It is time to join the fight against IS in Syria
The Islamic State is as monstrous an enemy as we have seen in recent history. It crucifies and decapitates its…
I’ve never thought much of John Lennon’s music – until now
It’s probably blasphemous to admit that I’ve never thought very much of John Lennon’s music. Common sense tells me it…
Long life
When Robert Peston, the economics editor of the BBC, interviewed George Osborne on television in an open-necked shirt with collar…
Home is where the heart is
99 Homes is an American drama about house repossession. Bummer, you might think, but here is what you don’t yet…
A hero of our time
I have met Dr Kissinger, properly, only three times. First, in Cairo, in 1980, when, as a junior diplomat escorting…
Long life
While the Germans were raining bombs on London during the second world war, the architects’ department of London County Council…
The real theatre of war
The history of ‘great events’, Voltaire wrote, is ‘hardly more than the history of crimes’. Physically, the war in Asia…
Anniversary fatigue
There’s a part of me that thinks OK, we’ve heard enough now, one year on from the beginning of the…
Funny business
What does it take to be a stand-up comic? Jackie Mason has absolutely no idea
High life
If any of you sees Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, walking around with a begging bowl in his…
Mexican wave
Tours that start in Mexico have a nasty habit of repeating on one. Of all the British groups touring in…
Shrunk
America’s psychoanalysts are becoming an endangered species
Death by politics
Dead Sheep is a curious dramatic half-breed that examines Geoffrey Howe’s troubled relationship with Margaret Thatcher. Structurally it’s a Mexican…
All that glitters is not gold
Woman in Gold feels rather like a Jewish version of Philomena as this too is about an older woman seeking…
High life
Athens I am walking on a wide pedestrian road beneath the Acropolis within 200 meters of the remaining Themistoclean wall…
That’ll teach you to attempt a joke, Sean
What a pleasure it is to see the Hollywood actor Sean Penn neck deep in PC ordure. The rodentine thespian…
Audience participation
Torben Betts is much admired by his near-namesake Quentin Letts for socking it to London trendies. Letts is one of…
Special effects
No phrase is better calculated to tense the neck muscles of a regular podcast listener than ‘We have something special…
Brief encounter
I lost count long ago of the number of dinner parties and pub conversations where I’ve had to utter the…
Pop icon
The Coca-Cola ‘contour’ bottle is 100 years old. Stephen Bayley salutes a design classic
Stealing a march
Selma, the civil rights film that stars David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, undoubtedly contains the best and most powerful…
Seeing the elephant
There were great numbers of young men who had never been in a war and were consequently far from unwilling…
Slowly, slowly, catchy, catchy
Foxcatcher is a crime drama (of sorts) that has already been dubbed ‘Oscarcatcher!’ as it barely puts a foot wrong.…
