political correctness
The scourge of the sensitivity reader
A comparatively new figure with no accredited expertise now dictates to literary agents, senior editors and award-winning authors
The latest Dragon Age game is unbearably right-on
Like all other forms of culture, video games offer a way to escape from, or reflect on, reality through fiction.…
On the offensive
Just how edgy and dangerous is Ricky Gervais? There is no one more edgy and dangerous, we learn from no…
High life
New York Imagine a European country today in which a newspaper in its most populous city launches a mendacious project…
High life
New York It’s party time in the Bagel, and it’s about time, too. Good restaurants and elegant nightclubs are…
The bare essentials
Ezra Pound in ABC of Reading: ‘Dichten = condensare.’ Meaning poetry is intensification, ‘the most concentrated form of verbal expression’.…
High life
New York The high life has gone with the wind because of you know what. The last time I went…
Sense without sensibility
Philip Hensher feels he should be on Jordan Peterson’s side, but finds it a struggle
Dumb and dumber
Here’s a worried question I want to plant in your head: when is TV drama going to start depicting the…
High life
Gstaad Imagine a beautiful, sexy woman, an Ava Gardner or a Lily James, with a wart on the end of…
The boys are back in town
There’s a delicious scene in the new season of Amazon’s superheroes-gone-bad series The Boys. The chief superhero Homelander (Antony Starr)…
High life
Gstaad Birthdays at my age are for the birds, but always a good excuse for a party. Messages of…
High life
I just read a piece by Scott McConnell in the American Conservative, a magazine we co-founded 18 years ago. He…
High life
Oh, to be in America, where cultural decay and self-destruction compete equally with hyper-feminist and anti-racist agendas. Gone with the…
Stranger things
Of all the many things I’ve learned from the radio so far this decade, the most deranging is that the……
Prince Andrew and me
No use piling on where Prince Andrew is concerned. It’s a sorry business, and he’s not among the brightest either.…
The joy of my grandson’s baptism
They were putting the finishing touches to the giant tent as I drove up to Schloss Wolfsegg after an hour’s…
Gloriously un-PC: Chris Lilley’s Swiftian, scabrous, gleefully misanthropic Lunatics reviewed
‘Unfunny, boring and utterly unrelenting,’ says the Guardian’s one-star review of Chris Lilley’s new sketch series Lunatics (Netflix). And if…
Sebastian Flyte had nothing on me: memories of a misspent youth
Charlottesville is an enchanting Virginia college town graced by the neoclassical architecture of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson. I flew…
Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?
‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…
I’ve never seen Coogan better or Partridge funnier: This Time with Alan Partridge reviewed
Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of…
Why truth gets you nowhere
New York There is fear and loathing in this city, with men looking over their shoulders for the thought…
The new Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker is a delight – but the script isn’t
You won’t be aware of this because the BBC has been keeping it very quiet. But the new Doctor Who…
All the good non-fiction that was ever on TV was made by middle-aged men
All the good non-fiction things that were ever on TV — from Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation to David Attenborough’s Planet Earth…
Holidays in Hell – Such A Pleasant Getaway from the BBC
Apparently there’s a new ‘character’ on University Challenge. I wouldn’t know. Last year, I vowed never again to raise my…
