The timing of this week’s public inquiry into “the events at the Countess of Chester Hospital”, and the growing suspicion that Lucy Letby’s convictions are unsafe, inadvertently throws up a dramatic forking of two possible worlds. In the first, the …
Prince Harry: the millennial’s millennial
Somewhere in Montecito on Sunday, a balding Englishman will celebrate his birthday over a bold Tignanello, clinking glasses with his glamorous Californian wife. Like Footloose, Agadoo and the original Apple Mac, Prince Harry is turning 40 — leaving behind a …
The Baroness making a fortune from Net Zero
In the realm of science, few politicians are more powerful than Baroness Brown. As the chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, her remit is to consider the boundaries of Britain’s future: from AI to medicine, from …
Inside Oakland’s vigilante resistance
Juan Salcedo was fed up with the endless stunt driving outside his front door. Day and night, young men took over the intersection in front of his house and did doughnuts, sometimes for hours on end. At around five in …
The power of Taylor Swift’s politics
It’s an important lesson for politicians: never give your enemies a name. Hillary Clinton did it, disastrously, with her off-the-cuff announcement about a “basket of deplorables”. Did it cost her the election? On its own, no, but it certainly didn’t …
What is your digital mask hiding?
Last Saturday, the YouTube personality Nikocado Avocado surprised his 4.27 million followers by losing more than 100kg overnight. Having gained notoriety via “mukbang” — that is, filming himself eating — his audience was amazed to find he’d gone from morbidly …
Why Israel can’t give up the Philadelphi Corridor
What’s in a name? Only 350 feet wide and nine miles long, the “Philadelphi Corridor” is little more than a speck. Yet it has, in recent weeks, assumed outsized proportions. Before October 7, this tiny sliver of land separating Egypt …
How Fritz Lang invented fantasy
It’s one of the sad facts of our miserable climate of miserable prognostications about the state of the cinema that it continually obscures a simple truth: movies are very young. Compared to most artforms, the cinema is still in its …
The night Trump lost the election
Last night’s presidential debate was described as “the most consequential presidential debate in modern American history” so many times that no one bothered to ask just why that was so. For one thing, it could only be described as consequential …
How culture warriors exploited Creative Scotland
Those London theatre lovers living south of Watford might not have noticed, but Scotland’s small but lively cultural sphere has recently become the latest contested territory in the UK’s unrelenting culture wars. It was revealed last week that a part-time …
The intellectual dishonesty of Shlomo Sand
I saw Shlomo Sand speak once. It was at a public event in 2008, but I remember him well: a preening man with a leather jacket and a manner of such monumental self-regard that he reminded me of an Israeli …
The underground railroad for Russian deserters
Right at the start of our conversation, Sergei is keen to emphasise that he never killed anyone. “I wouldn’t be able to live if I was responsible for hurting anyone,” insists the former Russian soldier, who spent several weeks on …
Trump vs Harris is just a front
When Donald Trump and Kamala Harris step into the ring this evening, America will be treated to an illusion. For the past month, we’ve been told that tonight’s showdown in Pennsylvania will be pivotal — that, finally, the nation will …
In defence of stereotypes
Everyone seems to agree that you shouldn’t put people in boxes. Men and women are uniquely individual, and therefore not to be stereotyped. Why not, however, isn’t so clear. It can’t be because all stereotypes are negative and offensive. The …
Why couldn’t the UK deal with the Isis matchmaker?
When Tooba Gondal, Britain’s notorious “Isis matchmaker”, callously celebrated the November 2015 Paris attacks, she couldn’t have possibly known that her destiny was to return to that great city as a resident of its penal system. Last December, Gondal was …