Poverty
Why I don’t stick to football
In football, you are always stronger in numbers. With a shared focus, people from different cultures, nationalities, races, sexual orientations,…
Boris's levelling up risks leaving behind London
Boris Johnson’s plan to ‘level up’ Britain sounds long overdue. It implies the creation of a less geographically unequal United…
Westminster and the truth about the class ceiling
Social mobility is more urgently needed than ever
The real reasons children are going hungry
‘We’re idiots, babe, it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.’ I listened to The Food Programme on Radio 4…
Trade not aid: spending more doesn’t mean we care more
Spending more doesn’t mean we care more
How come the less something is a problem, the more people talk about it?
The less something is a problem, the more people talk about it
Lives vs lives – the global cost of lockdown
The global cost of lockdown
Who can still make a Sunday joint last a week?
Sunday lunch was always roast beef and, in the traditional way, the Yorkshire pudding was served first with gravy, supposedly…
There’s nothing equal about this virus
Filthy germ-laden townsfolk were out and about on the footpaths near my home on Easter Sunday, dragging with them their…
The cops are impotent in lawless New York
New York Things are heating up, in both London and Nueva York, as this place should correctly be called.…
![David Schwimmer has produced a new film of Alexander Zeldin’s play LOVE for the BBC. [Photo: Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/12/8Declead.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
David Schwimmer on his new BBC film
There is very little art about modern poverty, because who wants to know? It is barely acknowledged, unless there is…
The poorer I get, the more capitalist I become
‘What a fabulous tan, where did you get it? said one of my fellow lunch guests as we entered the…
A short history of flash photography
All photography requires light, but the light used in flash photography is unique — shocking, intrusive and abrupt. It’s quite…
The Florida Project never sanctifies or demonises and is absorbing throughout
The Florida Project is a drama set in one of those cheap American motels occupied by poor people who would…
Destitute Britain
I became aware that there was real destitution in modern Britain five years ago. Destitution, as I see it, arises…
How to be good
Suffering, wrote Auden, takes place ‘while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along’. His…
Putting the boot into Italy
A young woman, naked and covered in blood, totters numbly down a night road. A driver spots her in his…
Change and decay
Writing of his grandmother’s cremation, Kushanava Choudhury reflects in The Epic City that, while his expatriate Indian cousins are separated…
Training the horse from hell
There were moments while reading this sprawling, ambitious novel when I thought I was reading a masterpiece. But at other…
Penury dictates that I find more lucrative work — but I can’t afford to
My adventures in penury land me with two job applications on my screen, one for MI6, one for Sainsbury’s. Do…
The climate change agenda is a conspiracy against the poor
In trying to protect ‘our grandchildren’ from climate change, politicians are hurting the poor. They shouldn’t
The climate summit in Paris will feature a lot of hot air
The delegates who will gather for the star-studded Paris climate summit include celebrities, presidents and perhaps even the Pope. Among…
Dear Mary: How can I make visiting friends realise it is a burden to take them to see the sights?
Q. I am an impoverished artist living in a famously cheap European city, largely for reasons of economy. I love…
The Tories must move quickly to recruit ex-Labour voters. Here's how
David Cameron might not be remembered as the best prime minister in modern British history but he will probably be…
Chairman Mao: monster of misrule
Mao Zedong, once the Helmsman, Great Teacher and Red Red Sun in Our Hearts, and still the Chairman, died in…
