political correctness
When diversity means uniformity
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?
I’m back in New York and digesting the five glorious days spent in Normandy. What was the fighting all about,…
Once you get over its political correctness, Netflix’s Godless is a cracker
Boy came to me the other night in a state of dismay. ‘Dad, I just turned on Match of the…
Everyone’s doing a mea culpa these days — except me
The faux Leonardo that sold for 400 million greenbacks — plus a 50 million fee for Christie’s — was a…
When did fiction become so dangerous?
The assignment of books for review has always been haphazard. Fellow fiction writers can be tempted either to undermine the…
Goodbye London, Reykjavik here I come
I have a message for the London mayor, Sadiq Khan: you and your policies stink! While the fuzz are busy…
The dwarves of death who control your TV
My own fault, I suppose, for turning on the television. Not an action I undertake very regularly these days, because…
High life
When the Germans smuggled arguably the world’s most evil man into Russia 100 years ago, they did not imagine the…
Don’t like our diversity agenda? You’re fired
Earlier this week, a technology website published an internal memo written by a Google employee called James Damore criticising the…
Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Marx’s detritus
Yassmin Abdel-Magied recently published a piece in The Guardian Australia lambasting her critics as being merely ‘afraid of a young…
Mind games
Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall enjoys the dubious status of a modern classic. A black mental-health patient, Christopher, is about to…
Counting on sheep
Going Forward (BBC4, Thursdays) is a BBC comedy about the continuing adventures of Kim Wilde, the fat, cynical but lovable…
Dreadlocks
‘Why are you filming this?’ ‘For everyone’s safety.’ Those are the last words in a 46-second video that was watched…
Safe space in ancient Athens
Brilliant Oxford undergraduates argue that it is right to prevent us saying things they object to, because speech they do…
Bored of the dance
At 19, I dropped out of university to pursue a career as a rave promoter. I went into business with…
In praise of PC
Here’s another stock joke for your collection: Pembroke College, Cambridge, has cancelled a fancy dress party themed on Around the…
High life
Gstaad I had the rather subversive idea of offering a six-figure sum to Oriel College, Oxford. On one condition: that…
A lesson in self-censorship
Surviving as a Tory teacher means keeping quiet
In defence of gender
Children are not all ‘gender fluid’. It’s dangerous and wrong to try to persuade them that they are
Tell the truth about benefit claimants and the left shuts you down
Next month sees the release of Trumbo, a biopic about Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood…
High life
This is going to be one hell of a year, hell being the operative word. It will be the year…
Why ‘safe’ is Dot Wordsworth’s word of the year
‘Makes me feel sick,’ said my husband, referring not to the third mince pie of the morning (in Advent, supposedly…
How we ended up ‘cisgender’
‘That’s not how you spell “system”,’ said my husband triumphantly, pointing with his whisky glass at a placard inveighing against…
I went to Pedro’s Tex Mex Cantina to claim my racist sombrero
Pedro’s Tex-Mex Cantina is a fantastical shack near a ring road in Norwich. It was recently asked to stop handing…
The Australian way
Turning back boats saves lives
