Obviously one’s first reaction to hearing about the rain and mud at Burning Man this year was very similar to learning about the glitch that led to all those flights to and from British airports being cancelled last week: thank …
How France lost control of Gabon
Gabon fulfils all the stereotypes you might have about the west coast of Africa. Brutal, kleptocratic dictator whose family have been in power for over 50 years? Tick. Highly corrupt political system that facilitates large multinational companies to pillage, rob …
Why is Britain so depressed?
Anyone with experience of depression will recognise the approaching symptoms: a numbed blankness of feeling, or pangs of melancholy nostalgia for a lost contentment now impossible to imagine. A black cloud of affectless lethargy drains life of purpose, making any …
How I lost my sexuality
In hospital, one of the things that is never mentioned, and there really is no reason for it to be, is sex. There are no jokes, double entendres, or exchanged looks. The place is antiseptic in all senses. Of the …
The desperate plight of trans widows
“Terrible things are happening to women and girls across my country… and the media doesn’t care. It’s only interested in the trans issue.”
Vaishnavi Sundar, an Indian feminist filmmaker, has long been furious at the way women and girls are …
What prisons teach us about democracy
Andrea Albutt has been a dedicated public servant for almost four decades who worked as a military nurse and ran four prisons. But after eight years as president of the Prison Governors Association, she despairs of the crumbling institutions, overwhelmed …
Why we need Oliver Anthony
It can be a little bit embarrassing admitting that you are a Country music fan when you’re a middle-class journalist living in London. It carries a certain stigma: “Isn’t that just music for rednecks?” someone asked me recently, somewhat baffled. …
Netflix is giving you bad taste
The end of holiday season is upon us, and a chance to apply a new perspective to life as it slowly returns to boring normality. For a few short weeks, if you were lucky enough, you were able to immerse …
Beware the new leviathans
Are men and women naturally good? The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought so, though he admits that we began in a state of “savagery” in which moral terms such as good and bad simply didn’t apply. From there, however, the human …
Can a psychologist find you love?
We spend our lives chasing it, nurturing it, or watching it slip away. Yet the truth about love seems to dissolve in the light, evading any attempt at definition. Are we any closer than the famously love-struck ancient Greeks to …
Why Sweden tolerates Quran burning
Sweden has long been a country known for its commitment to tolerance and its embrace of human rights: a “moral superpower” devoted to foreign aid, progressive causes and support of developing nations. All the more surprising, then, that Sweden now …
Comrade Starmer has never had class
Has Keir Starmer traded in his barrister’s wig for a hammer and sickle? He certainly seems keen for voters to think so, with his repeated pledges to smash “the class ceiling”. The “project” of Labour, Comrade Starmer believes, is to …
I went to Gabon for football – and found a massacre
The taxi pulled up outside an unremarkable concrete block. It wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting but I paid and got out. An election banner drooped from a second-floor balcony. Maybe this was the right place.
It was January 2017, …
Vivek Ramaswamy is the Macbeth candidate
In the arena of modern American politics, few figures have enjoyed an ascent as rapid as Vivek Ramaswamy. This 38-year-old son of Tamil Brahmin immigrants has positioned himself as the intellectual heir to Donald Trump in the current Republican primary …
Has the Church stopped working?
Ever since the Enlightenment — in fact, ever since the ancient philosophers complained about the young and their lack of morals — religion has feared for its future. So the front page of The Times yesterday was hardly a scoop.…