It must have been some time after the first brothel scene, but well before Jamie Lannister threw a child out of a window after being discovered mid-coitus with his twin sister, that the first audiences of HBO’s Game of Thrones …
America’s tribes are ready for war
Thursday 22 May 1856, was a sunny, sleepy day in Washington, D.C. As Preston Brooks, the Democratic Representative from South Carolina’s Fourth District, strolled into the Senate chamber, the air felt hot and heavy. The Senate’s business had wound down; …
The good news from Gaza
Once the sirens start wailing, we have 90 seconds to make it to the bomb shelter in the public park 500 yards behind the house. If the boys are asleep in bed, that means we have 90 seconds to get …
The Tory Party belongs to Alan Clark
It has seemed in recent months as though the Conservative Party’s energy has been directed not into governing, but into the public staging of a series of thinly-conceived morality tales about the comeuppance awaiting naughty parliamentarians — stories about the …
A sex room won’t save your marriage
Looking back, I feel profoundly pleased that I was a hottie when I was: after the Pill but before AIDS. The Seventies brought to the masses the sexual free-for-all that the “Swinging Sixties” had only really offered the few. A …
The West is homeless
I was chatting to the log man as we unloaded chunks of dried beech into my driveway from his trailer. Usually he brings me ash, but ash is becoming harder to find now that ash dieback disease, imported into Ireland …
The Tories don’t care about politics
Sometimes, when overwhelmed by morbid curiosity, I find myself reading the Wikipedia pages of plane crashes. Thanks to the data recovered from black boxes, especially of cockpit voice recordings, the last moments of a flight can be recreated with vivid …
British Rail must take back control
If Brexit taught us anything, it’s that a sentimental yearning for the past underpins Global Britain’s sense of its own adorable character. And the brilliant thing about Great British Nostalgia is that it belongs to all of us — not …
The cruelty of Biden’s border policy
When it comes to “open borders”, Joe Biden has gone as far as a President can go without actually abolishing them. This June alone, US Customs and Border Protection apprehended more than 200,000 people at the southern border, leading Republican …
Bankers have failed us again
A year ago, the governor of the Bank of England tried to downplay growing fears of inflation. Any increase, Andrew Bailey assured us, was understandable given the “bumpy” economic recovery after the pandemic, and he expected “it to come back …
Why the Tavistock won’t talk to me
For my day job, I interview celebrities, and here’s what you do if you want to interview a celebrity: you call up their press officer and pitch the piece you have in mind. The press officer checks if you have …
Will we escape our age of failure?
A little over a year ago, as inflation in the United States spiked to an alarming 5.4%, the nation watched on as President Biden addressed the public’s concerns from a White House lectern. His remarks in response to a reporter’s …
China can’t afford to invade Taiwan
Should Nancy Pelosi have gone to Taiwan? The question might preoccupy America for months ahead of the November mid-term elections. But the truth is her visit did nothing to alter China’s stance towards Taiwan. The Speaker of the House was …
Philip Larkin was a filthy genius
If literary reputations can be likened to a stock market, fluctuating on the tides of taste and time, Philip Larkin crashed in 1991. Until then he had been a strong buy, the unofficial post-war laureate, more synonymous with his time …
The dangers of monkeypox hysteria
They’ve been repeating it ever since the start of the Covid pandemic: “We are entering an ‘age of pandemics’ — this is just the beginning”. And they’ve been true to their word: no sooner had the threat of Covid started …