Racism
I was Oprah Winfrey’s hero
Gstaad Some of you may have noticed that I have not commented at all about the ongoing soap opera and…
The trouble with 'BAME'
Are Black people and Asians the same? Are they different from other ethnic minorities? What about Jews? And who do…
Is Black Lives Matter a voice for black Brits?
Does Black Lives Matter speak for black Brits? The organisation’s objectives are certainly radical: it has professed public support for direct…
What 'Britain's wokest headteacher' gets wrong
Ah, a story for our times. And I think you know how it’s going to go. There was this junior…
The fakery of Martha Gellhorn
Gstaad Martha Gellhorn was a long-legged blonde American writer and journalist who became Papa Hemingway’s third and penultimate wife. She…
Holding the Empire responsible for the state of modern Britain is becoming commonplace
It seems to have become a virtual orthodoxy of the academic and publishing worlds that history and fiction now have…
The aesthetic prejudice towards white classical statues
In the 1930s curators at the British Museum, under orders from Lord Duveen, a generous donor, scoured and hacked at…
The ‘anti-racism’ movement is sowing deeper divisions
Why the ‘anti-racism’ movement is dangerous
I could have directed it better: Steve McQueen's Small Axe reviewed
Unlike with every other BBC period drama series these days, I didn’t have to sit through Small Axe: Mangrove grumbling…
Racists will love it: National Theatre's Death of England – Delroy reviewed
Death of England: Delroy is a companion piece to Death of England, which ran in February at the NT and…
Why New Yorkers are fleeing the city in droves
New York Back when people used to read newspapers, they called it a ‘human interest’ story. Now it appears as…
The most important book on black Britishness has one flaw: its author was white
Can people of one race really understand the experience of another? asks Colin Grant
Covid marshals are killing theatre: The Shrine & Bed Among the Lentils reviewed
Covid marshals have invaded theatreland. Arriving for a weekday matinee at the Bridge, I was greeted by stewards holding up…
Louis Theroux’s podcast reveals a master at work
I always want to know more about Louis Theroux, which is odd, since I’ve seen so much of him already.…
The death of free speech
Oh, to be in America, where cultural decay and self-destruction compete equally with hyper-feminist and anti-racist agendas. Gone with the…
A book that could save lives: Adam Rutherford’s How to Argue with a Racist reviewed
In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English…
A brilliant, unrevivable undertaking: Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt reviewed
History will record Leopoldstadt as Tom Stoppard’s Schindler’s List. His brilliant tragic-comic play opens in the Jewish quarter of Vienna…
A terrific two-hander that belongs at the National: RSC's Kunene and the King reviewed
The Gift is three plays in one. It opens in a blindingly white Victorian parlour where a posh lady, Sarah,…
The history, power and beauty of infographics
on the history, power and beauty of infographics
Why do monsters make such good writers?
Did any of you know that most of the 20th-century monsters — Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Ceausescu, Duvalier, and even the…
Bernadine Evaristo shoulders weighty themes lightly: Girl, Woman, Other reviewed
It’s a slippery word, ‘other’. Taken in one light, it throws up barriers and insists on divisions. It is fearful…
Full of fascinating data and excellent comedy: Messiah at Stratford Circus reviewed
I’ve joined the Black Panthers. At least I think I have. I took part in an induction ceremony at the…
James Baldwin’s radicalism was part Marxist, part Christian
Great biographies try to answer questions about the complicated relationship between their subjects’ inner life and outer workings. How did…