One of the few skills I’ve retained from my teen years in the public school system of mid-Nineties America is the ability to get undressed in front of people without ever actually being naked. It is an art form particular …
The Dalai Lama’s greatest failure
Why does Buddhism get a free pass among religion’s cultured despisers? With the notable exception of the great Christopher Hitchens, who dished it out to all, most of the Western media hold Buddhism generally, and the Dalai Lama in particular, …
How Thatcher lost her culture war
Back in the Fifties, when he was still an Angry Young Man, novelist Kingsley Amis declared that he would always vote Labour. Come May 1979, however, and he was one of those feeling jubilant at the election victory of Margaret …
The next financial crisis will get ugly
This year’s banking crisis was never going to be 2008 redux — more like 2008, the sequel. And while the immediate crisis initially seemed to pass, as JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual letter to shareholders, the …
Why did Peter Daszak change his mind?
Peter Daszak spent many years hunting down bat viruses with Chinese scientists, helped fund their cutting-edge research in Wuhan, and then vociferously led opposition to any suggestions that the pandemic might have been linked to a laboratory in the city. …
Rescuing Ireland won’t save Biden
President Biden may have received a rapturous welcome in Ireland yesterday, but Democratic strategists in Washington will have taken little notice. With next year’s election looming, they increasingly look like they are stuck with a candidate who most in the …
Amsterdam turns on its sex punters
“If the Dutch government wants to groom millions of men every year into treating women like pieces of meat, Amsterdam is the best training ground they could possibly have.”
Anja, runs a support and advocacy service for women wishing to …
Private armies are making a killing
Last week, Russia claimed to have seized control of the city of Bakhmut after an eight-month battle with Ukrainian forces — the longest and bloodiest fight of the war so far. The assault, however, wasn’t led by the Russian Armed …
What Starmer could learn from Thatcher
As Conservative efforts to animate the ghost of Margaret Thatcher ramped up last September, when the real Thatcherite, Rishi Sunak, was beaten by a cosplaying Liz Truss, few noticed that a similar exorcism was taking place within the Labour Party. …
Is the National Gallery’s Rubens a copy?
This has been a long argument. In a few days, I will have lived for 77 years, and for nearly half that time, I have been challenging the National Gallery in London over one of its showpiece paintings.
At issue …
The myth of Trump and pro wrestling
America is witnessing two notable comebacks. The first, covered incessantly by the media, concerns Donald Trump’s quest to regain the presidency — recently complicated by his indictment in New York. The second, though subject to less scrutiny, is no less …
How Thatcherism outgrew its mistress
An American news network rang, on 8 April 2013, to tell me that Margaret Thatcher was dead. Yes, I was happy to be interviewed. There was the usual awkward silence, long enough that I wondered whether they had forgotten me, …
Nick Cave on Christ and the Devil
Nick Cave’s music is synonymous with emotional intensity and artistic restlessness. But in recent years, in both his blog The Red Hand Files and new book Faith, Hope and Carnage, he has become more outspoken on faith, spirituality, censorship and …
The death of Christian privilege
In a cemetery near the fishing village of Mousehole, in Cornwall, stands a memorial stone to Dolly Pentreath. Erected in 1860, it commemorates her death in 1777: already, by then, the last known native speaker of the Cornish language.
What …
Ireland will always be divided
Sitting together in the small hours of Good Friday, David Trimble and John Hume slipped into sentimentalism, harking back to holidays spent in Donegal and, in particular, the rugged, rocky peninsular of Inishowen. Inishowen is in the Republic, but is …