Greece
What Europe can learn from Greece’s alliance with Israel
In the 21st chapter of his magisterial 1948 history of the Second World War, Winston Churchill began with an arresting…
Greece and Britain’s long history of fighting autocracy
As I write, it is mid-morning in Athens and fighter jets are roaring overhead. My windows rattle, the sky splinters,…
High life
Gstaad Imagine a beautiful, sexy woman, an Ava Gardner or a Lily James, with a wart on the end of…
Break of dawn
The fall of Greece’s neo-Nazi party
Med alert
Greece and Turkey are in a battle for hegemony
Barometer
The other Argos The Argos catalogue, known as the ‘Book of Dreams’, is no longer to appear in printed form.…
Fair women and brave men
History is full of ‘ifs’ and the Spartan story fuller than most. If the 300 had not made their famous…
High life
Aristophanes was a comic genius long before the Marx Brothers, but he also gave good advice to the Athenians: stop…
My bid to boost my carbon footprint
Inspired by Harry and Meghan I decided to get on a plane. I hadn’t been anywhere for so long it…
How Athenians would have broken the Brexit deadlock
It is said that our political system is ‘broken’ simply because the passions aroused by Brexit have effectively created a…
Standing on the Acropolis brings out the Greek in me
Athens I am struggling up the slippery marble steps of the Acropolis with the Geldofs and the Bismarcks. We gaze…
Lunch on Leonard Cohen Island: The Pirate Bar reviewed
The Pirate Bar is an oddity, even for this column: a bar and restaurant themed in homage to a pirate,…
Let’s choose our politicians by random selection
Athens Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to…
Tantrums and a top-notch tabbouleh: Ergon House in Athens reviewed
Ergon House is an epicurean boutique hotel in downtown Athens. (I quote the blurb — I never write ‘boutique’ willingly.)…
A Greek tragedy: how the EU is destroying a country
‘Now Greece can finally turn the page in a crisis that has lasted too long. The worst is over.’ With…
The joy of a Greek summer
Some jerk know-nothing writes in an unreadable American newspaper that Greece is back — Athens, actually. He would, he’s an…
Greece Notebook
I have come to Greece in search of sanity over Brexit. Ostensibly it is a symposium to discuss relations between…
High life
I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super…
Warning: top-performing funds are highly likely to contain tobacco
Axa will no longer invest in the tobacco industry: the French insurance giant will sell €184 million of shares and…
Desperate straits
The Turkey-EU deal will do nothing to fix the migrant crisis. Just ask the people-smugglers in Istanbul
High life
Athens I am walking around downtown Athens watching as thousands of migrants field pitches from smugglers offering alternative routes…
Linked in
What makes the World Service so different from the rest of the BBC? I asked Mary Hockaday, the controller of…
High life
Gstaad I had the rather subversive idea of offering a six-figure sum to Oriel College, Oxford. On one condition: that…
High life
Athens Viewed from Mars, this is a sunny, peaceful city. Up close, however, things ain’t what they used to be.…
High life
Gstaad Jeremy Clarke has wiped me out again, for a change. His accounts of the high jinks on board the…
