Every year on Love Island, there is bad behaviour, misogyny, shouting matches and tears. But it seems the further we get from #MeToo, the harsher and more manipulative the male contestants have become. Unsurprisingly, there has been a backlash: the …
The Tories need to get over Thatcher
Like so many political rivals, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are divided by a common ambition. Both want to cast themselves as the heir to Margaret Thatcher. To do that, they are erecting radically different accounts of Thatcher’s time in …
How to save sex
“Is it okay if I touch you?” Half an hour after I’d started chatting with this guy on Grindr he was in my bedroom, beginning a series of questions meant to lead from touching to any number of other acts. …
The Jihadists of the Caribbean
“He’s a truly spiritual person,” Fuad Abu Bakr told me. He was referring to his father, Yasin, the notorious Trinidadian militant who led the first and only Islamist insurrection ever attempted in a Western democracy. We were standing in front …
Who would want fake Elgin Marbles?
Somewhere in a workshop in Tuscany, a robot is currently doing the work of the 5th-century BC sculptor, painter, and architect, Phidias. The 3D device is painstakingly recreating each carve, chisel, and curve of one of the sculptures of the …
How Mario Draghi broke Italy
Mario Draghi’s defenestration has left the Italian — and indeed international — establishment reeling in horror. This is not surprising. When he was nominated as Italy’s prime minister at the beginning of last year, Europe’s political and economic elites welcomed …
Are you normal?
There’s a lot of normal stuff going on right now. Last week, for instance, the Jan 6 committee heard that the staff of the tottering Trump White House had divided itself into Team Crazy (guys urging the defeated President to …
Interrailing wasn’t all sex and sunshine
My school days were plagued by the annual July ritual of the French mistress asking each girl in turn, “Comment vas-tu passer tes vacances?” I grew up in Kent’s gin-and-Jag commuter belt, so Italy, Spain and France were favoured destinations. …
How dangerous are the MAGA mavericks?
The Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, is a political lifer who has represented the most conservative district in California for the past 15 years. He has every reason to feel confident about his party’s future. According to most polls, …
Peter Thiel on the dangers of progress
You can tell a bit about someone based on their preconceptions about Peter Thiel. Whether the reflexive response to the name is “malign far-Right plutocrat”, “philanthropic saviour of all that is good” or “who?” is a reasonably reliable guide to …
David Frost: Does Brexit still matter?
Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost has put his support behind Liz Truss. He sat down with Freddie Sayers to explain that decision, and whether today’s Conservatives add up to a philosophy of government…
Was Rishi Sunak’s claim …
Is this the end of levelling up?
Remember levelling up? Before Patterson, Partygate, and Pinchergate, it was supposed to be the main focus of this government. Along with getting Brexit done and keeping Corbyn out of Number 10, it helped win the Tories their largest majority in …
Vladimir Putin’s fascist fetish
This weekend, 150 days will have passed since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and started an all-out war that his flunkies assured him would last no more than three days. News from the ground is mixed. On the one hand, Russia …
How Outlander resurrected Culross
If you stumbled across Culross on a summer’s day, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered into a Dutch master’s painting. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The charismatic, curiously foreign-looking Fife village could be the lost cousin of …
The problem with being hot
The late Rush Limbaugh once said that feminism was created to “allow ugly women access to society” — a comment all the crueller because it was true. A central tenet of feminism is that a woman’s social value should be …