Barbed wire knots together sky and earth. Burned-out vehicles, modern-day carcasses of industrial warfare, dot the landscape. The ground is strafed and cratered: Eastern Ukraine has been disembowelled by shelling. The war here is fought with 21st-century drone technology, but …
The American experiment has just begun
“The anti-American obsession: it’s all in me, I confess. America is terrifying. Its internal unbalances appear extreme (economic, cultural, racial), an unimaginable fragility. It concerns us closely as a mirror of the future — our future, if we still have …
Will the working class strike back?
I felt oddly cheerful last Friday evening as I trudged home through the snow, forsaken by public transport that had stopped running. The truth is that, like Slade or Morecambe and Wise, strikes bring back poignant memories of the Christmases …
Musk will never tame Twitter
Elon Musk and Twitter seem to be circling the drain. When Musk banned any links to Twitter competitors on Sunday, prompting criticism even from former allies and a humiliating climbdown later that day, it appeared as if Musk had fully …
Claire Keegan’s faithless Christmas Carol
Most modern Christmas “classics” look and feel as fake as a tinsel-draped plastic fir-tree. Though streaming services and Hollywood studios try to persuade us that their latest twist on the Elf who saved Christmas from the Grinch while Santa had …
Why I stopped being a good girl
Last week, Hadley was nominated for Columnist of the Year at The Press Awards.
I was always a good girl, by which I mean a people pleaser, because that is what being a good girl is. I enjoyed the benefits …
How lobbyists captured the EU
Addressing a recent European Parliament debate on “human rights in the context of the World Cup”, vice-president Eva Kaili had an unexpected message: “Qatar is a frontrunner in labour rights.” So, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised when, last week, …
Why can’t the West do yoga?
The ongoing debate around yoga and cultural appropriation may not be quite as old as the practice itself, but it still feels ancient. Few questions have reliably generated more ink, and more continuous angst within the controversy-hungry media class, than …
Beauty has become our enemy
I was walking through the chaos of Times Square recently when, in search of some minor relief, I reflexively raised my head and focused on a space in the middle distance where I have been conditioned to expect the calming …
The elitism of the river Thames
London is a cruel city. Live here long enough, and you will see everything familiar vanish: neighbourhoods transformed, venues closed, old friends moving on. There is just one permanent thing in the capital, one thing that transcends the flux of …
Welcome to Albania’s Little London
I’m standing near the foot of a mountain that looms over Has in north-eastern Albania, staring at a bright red phone box that appears to have been transported here from the streets of Nineties London. To one side, a row …
What I discovered at Twitter HQ
One name at the centre of the story about Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” is that of Jay Bhattacharya. A professor at Stanford’s medical school, he rose to prominence as a co-author of the “Great Barrington Declaration”, which opposed Covid lockdown …
How conservatives misunderstand grooming
Philosophers sometimes like to talk about “technological affordances” — basically, the possibilities of action that a new technology affords. Twitter’s affordances include the capacity to destroy one’s enemies without leaving the platform or otherwise breaking a sweat. This is the …
The men who worship Yukio Mishima
In some ways it’s strange that the online bodybuilding community idolises a slender, unathletic, literary youth. But given his knowledge of weakness, Yukio Mishima, real name Kimitake Hiraoka, understood the addictive pursuit of strength.
Mishima examined strength and weakness in …
This is the end of Trump
On Thursday, Donald Trump made the “major announcement” on Truth Social that he’d teased the day before. Since declaring for the 2024 presidency in mid-November, he’s done precious little campaigning; many expected him to release rally dates or issue some …