George Orwell
Why we still need Orwell
I’ve been reading a new biography of George Orwell that’s been published to coincide with the 70th anniversary of his…
What would George Orwell make of Brexit?
In the London Review of Books this month, James Meek wrote a long article about Jacob Rees-Mogg and his ‘curious duality’ in…
The royals should embody virtue – not signal it
ONE should not be censorious if the Duke and Duchess of Sussex fly in private jets to their holidays, though…
Novel explosives of the Cold War
One autumn night in 1991, I stood on the rooftop terrace of a tacky villa in Saranda once owned by…
History holds far fewer lessons for Brexit than both sides think
How we love bringing history into our political debates. It may seem strange in a country where so little history…
China’s surveillance technology is terrifying – and on show in London
I was recently treated to a small taste of the real China. It was in the incongruous setting of a…
Dying buddleias on railway lines are what excite the new nature writer
A parliament of owls. A gaggle of geese. A convocation of eagles. But what is the generic term for the…
Cabbages and kings
The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919)…
Labour’s England problem
My party needs to stop being scared of patriotism
Polly’s pleb adventure
Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari,…
Long may we laugh at our absurd demagogues
In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke warned that ‘pure democracy’ was as dangerous as absolute monarchy. ‘Of…
The winged rabbit who made me a Tory
His father’s dental cast, writes Graham Greene near the beginning of The Power and the Glory ‘had been [Trench’s] favourite…
Among the snobs, slobs and scolds
The author of this jam-packed treasure trove has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000 and…
Mr Spock and I
For a show with a self-proclaimed ‘five-year mission’, Star Trek hasn’t done badly. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon train to the stars’…
A good editor and a good man
Before embarking on this book, Jeremy Lewis was told by his friend Diana Athill that his subject, the newspaper editor…
The heavens are falling
The dystopian novel in which a Ballardian deluge or viral illness transforms planet Earth has become something of a sub-genre,…
Putting Germany together again
The purpose of Lara Feigel’s book is to describe the ‘political mission of reconciliation and restoration’ in the devastated cities…
Scratching a living
John Gross’s The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters: English Literary Life since 1800, a standard text for…
Why I left
I cannot be part of a movement run by half-educated fanatics
Fighting talk
If there’s one thing scarcer than hen’s teeth in serious choreography nowadays, it’s a light heart. When was the last…
Eastern airs
On Private Passions this week the writer Amitav Ghosh gave us a refreshingly different version of what has become a…
The perfect pub
Whenever one of those news stories appears about how many pubs have been forced to close in the last year,…
Diary
I am writing a play about Dr Johnson and his Dictionary. It will be performed in Scotland later this year.…
Barometer
Watching brief Samsung warned users of its voice-activated televisions that what they said in front of the TV could be…
Je suis Page 3
‘I for one would be sorry to see them go,’ wrote George Orwell. ‘They are a sort of saturnalia, a harmless…
