Feminism
Poetic and profound: The Starry Messenger reviewed
Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote the movie Manchester by the Sea, shapes his work from loss, disillusionment, small-mindedness, hesitation and superficiality,…
Sunday night on the Beeb was an orgy of virtue-signalling and third-rate sport
After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they…
The forgotten masterpieces of Amy Beach
At the Wigmore Hall last Friday, the Takacs String Quartet and Garrick Ohlsson played a piano quintet that was once…
Feminism for the Fleabag generation: The Polyglot Lovers, by Lina Wolff, reviewed
Everyone behaves badly in The Polyglot Lovers — no saving graces. It’s a complex, shifting structure of sex, self-hatred and…
Feminism has succeeded – so why don’t we call it quits?
You would think that the British Film Institute’s sponsorship of a month-long festival celebrating some of the most memorable female…
Is anything creepier than a ‘male feminist’?
Over a drink recently I sat next to a man who announced, barely before he’d taken his first sip, that…
Rebel girls of the 13th century
Women who can — however tenuously — be described as ‘rebel girls’ are big in publishing now. Goodnight Stories for…
A tease for #MeToo
Titania McGrath is the alter ego of the schoolteacher Andrew Doyle. A perpetually enraged ‘activist, healer and radical intersectional poet’,…
Slow-moving tale with a strong echo of Brideshead: Alys, Always at the Bridge reviewed
Nicholas Hytner’s new show, Alys, Always, is based on a Harriet Lane novel that carries a strong echo of Brideshead.…
Finally a Marvel film that doesn’t entirely bore the pants off Deborah Ross
Captain Marvel is the 654th film in the Marvel franchise — the figure is something like that, I think —…
![[GETTY IMAGES]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2019/02/GettyImages_477443388.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
I was forced to wear a hijab. It wasn’t liberating
It was World Hijab Day earlier this month. You probably missed it, but you can imagine the idea: ‘global citizens’…
Zoë Ball has the voice and warmth but not so much the chat
Whether by accident or design, Zoë Ball took over the coveted early-morning slot on Radio 2 this week just as…
Should we all write ‘feminist’ stocking fillers?
I arrived at Waterloo, half an hour before my train departed. Needing to buy a birthday card, I popped into…
Refreshingly understated: BBC1’s Mrs Wilson reviewed
Shortly before her husband’s funeral, the undertaker told the eponymous main character in Mrs Wilson (BBC1, Tuesday) that, ‘We’re here…
Why we’re lying to ourselves over trans rights
On 21 November, a debate took place in the House of Commons about proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act…
Germaine Greer continues to shock and awe
There is an African bird called the ox-pecker with which Germaine Greer, conversant as she is with the natural world,…
Science is on the side of the trans activists
Some interesting scientific research on gender differences was published last week. Two social scientists studied the preferences of 80,000 people…
Are you a politically correct pervert?
It hasn’t always been easy being a progressive-minded man who prides himself on his sensitivity to issues of race, gender,…
150 years on, what makes Little Women such an enduring classic?
The great thing about Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women is that it has something for everyone: stay-at-home types have…
Women should boycott David Hare’s slanderous new play: I’m Not Running reviewed
Sir David Hare’s weird new play sets out to chronicle the history of the Labour movement from 1996 to the…
Women’s toplessness caused less offence to Victorians than their trousers
‘They did not look like women, or at least a stranger new to the district might easily have been misled…
![A woman-child of dangerous assurance: Allison Cook as Salome in Adena Jacobs’s new production for English National Opera. [Catherine Ashmore]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/10/6Octopera.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
A fascinating failure, but a failure nonetheless: ENO’s Salome reviewed
Yes, Oscar Wilde never wrote it. No, Strauss didn’t intend it. In fact, the composer famously demanded the Dance of…
Can my inner feminist cope with another restaurant named after a prostitute? Cora Pearl reviewed
Cora Pearl is the new, and second, restaurant from the people who made Kitty Fisher’s in Shepherd Market, Mayfair. Kitty…
Stop calling me ‘a privileged white man’ – I’m more than that
I got some bad news this week. I discovered that I’m a ‘privileged, white male’. It was my agent who…
Washed-up junkies, Trump the director and a cash giveaway: Edinburgh Festival round-up
Trump Lear is a chaotically enjoyable one-man show with a complicated premise. David Carl, an American satirist, has arrived on…
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