“I’m asking myself, ‘What the hell is going on?’” said Gavin Newsom to the assembled cameras, “It looked like a third-world country.” California’s progressive governor was in his state’s largest city because of a piece of viral content: images of …
What will Russia’s oligarchs do next?
Russia’s loyal oligarchs have always been liable to become chess pieces in political struggles. After the revolution broke out in Petrograd in February 1917, the long-despised Romanov aristocracy were ruthlessly stripped of their property and most prized possessions. The people …
Vladimir Putin’s war on chaos
The ancient Greek word “chaos” means a chasm or void, and its opposite is “cosmos”, meaning the exquisite design of the world. Modern astrophysicists are struck by what they call the “fine-tuning” of the universe, a place which looks as …
American education’s new dark age
Some years ago, I taught a course in public writing at the Claremont colleges, the consortium of elite liberal arts institutions in Southern California. My students were juniors or seniors, mostly humanities or social science majors, almost all smart, a …
Wheat has corrupted humanity
“Beef & Liberty”. Such was the slogan of the 18th century London dining club, The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks. The carnivorous Regency gentlemen were sensible in associating the scoffing of sirloin with freedom and the rights of Britons. Food, …
How gender self-ID is being abused
I assumed Harvey Marcelin was an elderly woman guilty of some sort of financial crime when I first read the charge sheet. The Department of Corrections website describes a six-foot, black female, born in 1938, charged with defrauding the government.…
How Hollywood destroyed Michael Cimino
Of all the downfalls in Hollywood history, Michael Cimino’s haunts me the most, destroyed by his artistic ambitions in a corporate town whose rules he didn’t want to play by. Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich may come close, but they …
How Hollywood destroyed Michael Cimino
Of all the downfalls in Hollywood history, Michael Cimino’s haunts me the most, destroyed by his artistic ambitions in a corporate town whose rules he didn’t want to play by. Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich may come close, but they …
How Russia’s sanction-proofing failed
“How could our government have been so stupid?” one Russian acquaintance of mine wondered, after the West imposed sweeping sanctions that froze around $300 billion of the Russian government’s foreign exchange reserves held in Western banks.
Over the past few …
The origins of Eric Zemmour
“Long live France anyway.” Even in front of a 12-man firing squad, Robert Brasillach was never lost for words. The author and journalist turned his dying phrase (“Vive la France quand même”) into a sort of “whatever…” quip on 6 …
Why the Left is split over Ukraine
Last week, Philip Bump of the Washington Post wrote a column about Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and referred, in passing and without elaboration, to “Right-wing pundit Glenn Greenwald”. The results were predictable. …
Stop calling yourself a dog parent
Was Lord Byron the first “dog dad”? At Newstead Abbey, the Romantic poet’s former home, there is a stone monument topped with an urn: perhaps the most famous pet memorial in the world. It was erected in honour of Byron’s …
Europe’s empty promises to Ukraine
Every war has a photograph that captures its horrors. Vietnam had Napalm Girl; Spain had The Falling Soldier. How will the war in Ukraine be remembered? Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s ruthlessness, an image of a heavily pregnant woman being stretchered …
German pacifism is dead
I was a teenager when my father was posted to Munich, on secondment from British Aerospace to work on the Eurofighter Typhoon. None of us really understood what he did there — all I knew is that he was an …
How powerful is Carrie Johnson?
Boris Johnson was not universally admired in the Foreign Office, when he headed it. In late 2017, his allies there suggested he would benefit from having a chief of staff. “This suggestion seemed to fall on deaf ears”, writes Michael …