Dubai
Should I wear a burka in the House of Lords?
On Advent Sunday, our grandson Christian became a Christian. He was baptised, sleeping, in the font of our parish church.…
Was Cat Stevens the inspiration for Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’?
The pop pin-up of the 1970s certainly suggests so – and, judging by his ‘official autobiography’, still finds himself endlessly fascinating
Stray shells and suicide bombers in Kabul’s finest hotel
Lyse Doucet describes how the Intercontinental, the journalists’ refuge for decades, is increasingly targeted by the Taliban as they gain control in Afghanistan
What a carve up! The British flair for disastrous partition
The ‘Great Partition’ of India in 1947 led to the wider division of Britain’s ‘empire within an empire’ – and to most of the problems plaguing southern Asia today
The creeping Dubai-ification of London
In December 2023, a TikTok influencer called Maria Vehera opened a packet of ‘Dubai chocolate’ in her car and filmed…
Where the young rich flee to
If Elon Musk gets his way, and Mars becomes our newest New World, I had always assumed that the people…
Gulf stream
Instagramming from Dubai isn’t ‘work’
Thomas Heatherwick
Thomas Heatherwick is the most famous designer in the United Kingdom today and has an unquestionable flair for attention-grabbing creations.…
X and his complexes
‘X’ is in ‘the Situation’: Joseph O’Neill, author of the clever and superb Netherland, hereby lets us know that his…
Barometer
Tough at the top The clocks on Big Ben were cleaned by abseiling window-cleaners. Some other big cleaning/painting jobs: —…
Why are we turning London into Dubai?
If you’ve ever wondered what it will look like when we colonise Mars, the answer is ‘Dubai’. I was there…
Neknominations – this is what the internet is for
Wouldn’t it be boring if everyone behaved much as you behave? If everyone expressed themselves similarly? Let a thousand flowers…
