cancel culture
You can’t cancel the cancelled
When Theresa May appointed me as a non-executive director of the Office for Students, the Downing Street press office decided…
Art and moralising don’t mix
Somewhat late in the day, Rosanna McLaughlin condemns the way art is now obliged to communicate clear and approvable messages, resulting in timid, defensive, rule-bound works
Culture clash: Sympathy Tokyo Tower, by Rie Qudan, reviewed
Social, moral, architectural and linguistic problems collide in this gem of a novel set in lightly altered contemporary Tokyo
Edinburgh Fringe’s war on comedy
Every day my inbox fills with stories of panic, madness and despair. The Edinburgh Fringe is upon us and the…
Is it time to cancel Strictly?
The BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing returned this weekend, but rather than being met with the usual fanfare there is a…
Progressives vs. bigots: How I Won a Nobel Prize, by Julius Taranto, reviewed
When a quantum physicist and her partner reluctantly move to a university staffed by cancelled luminaries the scene is set for a darkly comic clash of ideologies
To die for
Seventy-five years after its release, Powell and Pressburger’s dazzling, much-loved classic is more timely than ever, says Robin Ashenden
In defence of Howard Donald
The mob has claimed another scalp. This time it’s Howard Donald’s. The Take That star has been found guilty of…
Who’s to blame for our censorious students?
Without freedom of speech, you do not have a university. More than any other value, it is freedom of speech…
The problem with being anti-woke
I’m going to do something that will likely annoy you, dear reader: I am going to make an argument about a…
Bigger picture
Why Christie’s is wrong to cancel Eric Gill
Wings of desire
In 2014, an exhibition of watercolours by the renowned avian artist, John James Audubon, opened in New York. The reviews,…
Deathly silencing
Is there a woke case to be made for freedom of expression? Jacob Mchangama certainly seems to think so. This…
Diary
‘The mob’s going to want a chicken to kill and they won’t care much who it is,’ wrote John Steinbeck.…
The executioner’s song
What Norman Mailer’s ‘cancellation’ reveals
Neville’s advocate
Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain
The mind virus killing academia
We lost a giant last month with E.O. Wilson’s passing. A man who stood on Darwin’s shoulders, Wilson had that…
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter ban is nothing to celebrate
Marjorie Taylor Greene is nuttier than M&M World. Not your garden-variety conservative, or even a conservative at all, but a…
The Colston verdict is the triumph of values, not law
The verdict is in on the case of the Colston statue in Bristol. Not guilty. Every one of the accused…
The Guinea Pig club
Lloyd Evans on a musical that tells the story of the pioneering maverick whose methods for treating disfigured second world war airmen revolutionised plastic surgery
The rise of Indian cancel culture
In 1975, India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi suspended democracy. The so-called ‘Emergency’ was largely of her own making, giving her…
High life
New York I’ve never met anyone called Othello, certainly not in Venice nor in Cyprus, but perhaps there are men…
Sense and sensibility
Zoe Dubno on the rise of the ‘sensitivity reader’, a seductively cheap way for publishers to cancel-proof their books
Hold on to your hats, boys
Stephen Daisley 5 March 2022 9:00 am
The greatest ever social media spat took place before the first tweet was sent, and was conducted via fax, which…