political correctness

Ricky Gervais is an achingly conventional Millennial posing as a naughty maverick

11 June 2022 9:00 am

Just how edgy and dangerous is Ricky Gervais? There is no one more edgy and dangerous, we learn from no…

America is a nation divided

11 December 2021 9:00 am

New York Imagine a European country today in which a newspaper in its most populous city launches a mendacious project…

After a lifetime in nightclubs, now I party at home

4 December 2021 9:00 am

New York   It’s party time in the Bagel, and it’s about time, too. Good restaurants and elegant nightclubs are…

Poems are the Duracell batteries of language, says Simon Armitage

29 May 2021 9:00 am

Ezra Pound in ABC of Reading: ‘Dichten = condensare.’ Meaning poetry is intensification, ‘the most concentrated form of verbal expression’.…

We need Voltaire more than ever

24 April 2021 9:00 am

New York The high life has gone with the wind because of you know what. The last time I went…

Jordan Peterson is the Savonarola of our times

20 March 2021 9:00 am

Philip Hensher feels he should be on Jordan Peterson’s side, but finds it a struggle

How stupid do the script writers of Sky’s Devils think we are?

6 March 2021 9:00 am

Here’s a worried question I want to plant in your head: when is TV drama going to start depicting the…

The myth of American freedom

6 February 2021 9:00 am

Gstaad Imagine a beautiful, sexy woman, an Ava Gardner or a Lily James, with a wart on the end of…

Sick, puerile, inappropriate and delicious: Amazon Prime's The Boys reviewed

3 October 2020 9:00 am

There’s a delicious scene in the new season of Amazon’s superheroes-gone-bad series The Boys. The chief superhero Homelander (Antony Starr)…

How to have a happy old age

22 August 2020 9:00 am

Gstaad   Birthdays at my age are for the birds, but always a good excuse for a party. Messages of…

The forgotten victims of communism

11 July 2020 9:00 am

I just read a piece by Scott McConnell in the American Conservative, a magazine we co-founded 18 years ago. He…

The death of free speech

20 June 2020 9:00 am

Oh, to be in America, where cultural decay and self-destruction compete equally with hyper-feminist and anti-racist agendas. Gone with the…

Radio 4's new H.P. Lovecraft adaptation will give you the chills

24 January 2020 10:00 pm

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

30 November 2019 9:00 am

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

8 June 2019 9:00 am

They were putting the finishing touches to the giant tent as I drove up to Schloss Wolfsegg after an hour’s…

Chris Lilley as Quentin, the real-estate agent with an improbably huge arse who dreams of becoming a famous DJ

Gloriously un-PC: Chris Lilley’s Swiftian, scabrous, gleefully misanthropic Lunatics reviewed

11 May 2019 9:00 am

‘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

4 May 2019 9:00 am

Charlottesville is an enchanting Virginia college town graced by the neoclassical architecture of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson. I flew…

Frankie Boyle's New World Order, on which the comic is paid to say the totally and predictably sayable. Image: BBC/ Endemol Shine UK/ Brian J Ritchie

Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?

27 April 2019 9:00 am

‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…

Second coming: Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge

I’ve never seen Coogan better or Partridge funnier: This Time with Alan Partridge reviewed

2 March 2019 9:00 am

Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of…

Fear and loathing in New York

Why truth gets you nowhere

20 October 2018 9:00 am

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

13 October 2018 9:00 am

You won’t be aware of this because the BBC has been keeping it very quiet. But the new Doctor Who…

The rough, simple and cheerily thick lifeguards of Bondi Rescue. Image: Mojo Down Under

All the good non-fiction that was ever on TV was made by middle-aged men

1 September 2018 9:00 am

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

18 August 2018 9:00 am

Apparently there’s a new ‘character’ on University Challenge. I wouldn’t know. Last year, I vowed never again to raise my…

When diversity means uniformity

9 June 2018 9:00 am

I’d been suffering under the misguided illusion that the purpose of mainstream publishers like Penguin Random House was to sell…

Were all those young lives lost at Normandy in vain?

2 June 2018 9:00 am

I’m back in New York and digesting the five glorious days spent in Normandy. What was the fighting all about,…