culture wars
The astonishing stories behind today’s culture wars: Radio 4’s Things Fell Apart reviewed
Martin McNamara, the writer of Mosley Must Fall, a play on Radio 4 this week, must have had a jolt…
I’ve been back one week and the good old US of A has never seemed more depressing
New York Don’t let anyone tell you the Bagel is worse off than Kabul, where three people were recently shot…
America’s campus culture wars come for St Andrews
The University of St Andrews has been keen on American imports for some time. Americans make up 16 per cent…
I loved prison
Memories for me are like beautifully edited copy: all cleaned up and retaining only the good parts. The wife tells…
The economic illiteracy of anti-capitalists
Back in October, World Bank chief economist Carmen Reinhart recommended that countries borrow heavily during the pandemic. ‘First, you worry…
Pimlico Academy and the politicisation of the playground
The strange tale of Pimlico Academy, the central London school roiled by ‘anti-racist’ protests, shows us that the culture war…
The school that made an American century
New York With the Karamazovian hangover now only a weekly occurrence, the healthy life rules supreme. Well, most of the…
Is it time to cancel Sophocles?
Gstaad The sun has returned, the snow is so-so, and exercise has replaced everything, including romance. What a way to…
My advice to Trump supporters? Smile and take it
New York There are times, living in this here dump, when I doubt if anyone’s heard of the word magnanimity.…
My week with the baying Antifa mob
Portland, Oregon In the days when you could still watch a nature documentary without feeling as if you were sitting…
New York is a paradise for criminals
New York New York, New York, once a wonderful town/ The people are crap and the mayor’s a clown/ The…
In defence of wokeness
We have been reading an awful lot about ‘wokeness’ recently. Nobody, I notice, seems to be much in favour of…
How to beat cancel culture
One of the most extraordinary features of the ‘cancel culture’ is how well it works. All decent people hate it,…
The Dragon school’s bizarre decision to ban Gunga Din
Why do schools want to erase the past?
We are living through a frenzy of conformity
Reality seems thinner these days. As I walk along the high street, passers-by drift apart as though afraid of crossing…
How Oxford taught the no-platformers a lesson
Three weeks ago Amber Rudd travelled to Christ Church, Oxford, to speak to students about her experiences of being a…
Sordid confessions of a Centrist Dad
I have a shameful secret. I’ve been watching these… videos online. Amazing what you can get in a couple of…
For political discourse to survive, we must be more honest about language
When I was an English literature undergraduate, we were all very careful to avoid what used to be called the…
Don’t blame snowflakes – grown-ups are the idiots
San Francisco must be the virtue capital of the world. (The latest: just across the bay, Berkeley’s city council voted…
Nice men make terrible leaders
The Duke of Marlborough gave a toast last week that brought the house down during a Turning Point dinner for…
Roger Scruton: Should I forgive the journalist who got me fired?
I travel back from London with the St Matthew Passion filling my head, after the moving performance from the Elysian…
Why I hate ‘the n-word’
One of the depressing aspects of writing a column attuned to social hypocrisy is so rarely running short of new…
Free speech is officially dead in British universities
When I first read about plans for a new academic periodical called The Journal of Controversial Ideas, I got the…
Millennials aren’t taking offence. They’re hunting for victims
In a recent column, I vowed to return to a point made in passing. To refresh your memory, the American…
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s transgender superman
Comics aren’t what they used to be. In 1976 I was 11 — the perfect target audience for probably the…
