A decade ago, as a young war reporter for Vice News, I had the nagging feeling that one day I’d find my wizened older self, like an old NME journalist droning on about punk, reminiscing about the time when we …
The fatal attraction of victimising women
The erotomaniacal villainess of Fatal Attraction is something of a cipher. Only once in the 1987 film do we see Alex Forrest alone. Really alone, that is — not stalking Michael Douglas’s Dan Gallagher at a distance, or obsessively calling …
Can Liverpool be liberated from Labour?
Before Liverpool can bask in the joy of hosting next week’s Eurovision Song Contest, it must first contend with tomorrow’s local elections — and the rounds of mudslinging that have come with it. Take one of Labour’s election pamphlets, pushed …
Can you escape obesity?
There are a few debates in our political discourse that seem cursed to polarisation. Take, for example, discussion of overpopulation, resource constraints, and environmentalism. The two options appear to be either the belief that the world is or will soon …
Neoliberalism killed the liberal dream
The 150th anniversary of J.S Mill’s death seems a prime opportunity to reflect on the tangled mess that liberalism has bequeathed to the 21st century. Fairweather liberals can’t decide whether to torch their dusty copies of On Liberty or dust …
Father Ted’s elegy for old Ireland
Fondly remembered and occasionally quoted, Father Ted has its place in the broad canon of the British sitcom. But in Ireland, even 25 years since its finale, it has always been so much more. Its status is closer to Fawlty …
Father Ted’s elegy for old Ireland
Fondly remembered and occasionally quoted, Father Ted has its place in the broad canon of the British sitcom. But in Ireland, even 25 years since its finale, it has always been so much more. Its status is closer to Fawlty …
How the history wars came for Garibaldi
The claim that history is written by the winners has become axiomatic. But when an established narrative shifts, to the point that an opposite version of events emerges and is widely accepted, does that mean we now have a different …
Who is winning the scramble for Africa?
Reports of violence breaking out in Africa rarely raise eyebrows in the West these days. Perhaps we feel it has little to do with us, whatever the West’s historical responsibilities for the continent’s problems. But as the recent events in …
Inside America’s prison rodeo
As the Pink Panther theme tune stretches the limits of the loudspeakers, four prison inmates wearing bulletproof vests and baseball catchers’ masks make their way into the muddy rodeo arena. Carrying a red wooden table and plastic folded chairs, they’re …
JS Mill and the despotism of progress
In this oppressive era of hushed voices, furtive glances and underground resistance, it is little wonder that John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty has become an inspiration and a recourse for a new generation. Since its publication in 1859, Mill’s brief …
Left-brain thinking will destroy civilisation
What has an esoteric theory about the differing functions of the two hemispheres of the brain got to do with everyday politics, or science, or arguments on Twitter? Potentially, rather a lot.
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a neuroscientist and philosopher …
Britain needs King Charles the Weird
As the rain lashed Parliament Square this week, and Rishi Sunak’s bizarre police bicycle escort shouted its way through Whitehall, the capital resembled a drizzly, gothic Burning Man festival. Crowds of Extinction Rebellion protestors stood huddled from the weather in …
How women colonised yoga
Last year, my husband and I got into a curiously heated debate, along with two other couples, about whether or not it is manly to eat fruit. A surprising consensus emerged among the men, that fruit was categorically feminine. The …
Is Serbia a pro-Putin outpost?
A recent BBC documentary promises to take the British viewer “inside” Serbia, exposing the country’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The language is heightened, evoking Cold War ghosts. “There’s something strange happening in Serbia,” the presenter mutters in …