Racism

I was Oprah Winfrey’s hero

20 March 2021 9:00 am

Gstaad Some of you may have noticed that I have not commented at all about the ongoing soap opera and…

The trouble with 'BAME'

27 February 2021 6:30 pm

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?

25 February 2021 1:55 am

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

23 February 2021 6:17 pm

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

30 January 2021 9:00 am

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

30 January 2021 9:00 am

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

9 January 2021 9:00 am

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

5 December 2020 9:00 am

Why the ‘anti-racism’ movement is dangerous

I could have directed it better: Steve McQueen's Small Axe reviewed

28 November 2020 9:00 am

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

14 November 2020 9:00 am

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

7 November 2020 9:00 am

New York Back when people used to read newspapers, they called it a ‘human interest’ story. Now it appears as…

A night of angry pipsqueaks: Young Vic's 50th birthday gala reviewed

10 October 2020 9:00 am

When Kwame Kwei-Armah took over the Young Vic he strapped a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign over the front of the…

The most important book on black Britishness has one flaw: its author was white

3 October 2020 9:00 am

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

19 September 2020 9:00 am

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

25 July 2020 9:00 am

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

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…

The problem with mystery podcasts like Wind of Change

6 June 2020 9:00 am

Did the US secretly write a power ballad in order to bring down the Soviet Union? That’s the question behind…

A book that could save lives: Adam Rutherford’s How to Argue with a Racist reviewed

14 March 2020 9:00 am

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

15 February 2020 9:00 am

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

7 February 2020 10:00 pm

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

24 January 2020 10:00 pm

on the history, power and beauty of infographics

Why do monsters make such good writers?

24 January 2020 10:00 pm

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

21 December 2019 9:00 am

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

21 December 2019 9:00 am

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

7 December 2019 9:00 am

Great biographies try to answer questions about the complicated relationship between their subjects’ inner life and outer workings. How did…