How far is too far? From the Access Hollywood tape that many felt sure had sunk Donald Trump’s presidential hopes to the violent crescendo of January 6, this is the existential question Republican politicians have been forced to ask themselves …
How fear consumed American theatre
We all know our consciousness is corrupt, and a long life, examined, brings the burden of regret, shame, and indeed a horror at our own actions that, at times, becomes scarcely bearable.
The theatre, and tragedy particularly, offers a median …
The afterlife of Freud’s muse
“One of the main reasons I want to speak to you now is because I’ve become increasingly aware of how both of us are regarded, in relation to men,” writes the artist Celia Paul to the late Welsh portrait painter …
The resurrection of Marine Le Pen
Three months ago, Marine Le Pen’s political future seemed smashed into irrelevance by the rise of Eric Zemmour. She was past it, a tired war horse with no project and a quasi-bankrupt party, watching her closest National Rally associates being …
Inside the Battle of Bucha
“The worst thing is that, in the end, you get used to it.” Dmitry — not his real name — is talking to me over a bad line from the town of Bucha in the Kyiv Oblast of Ukraine. Several …
Joe Biden’s gender agenda
Right-thinking Americans, until very recently, tended to believe that heated arguments over transgenderism were a peculiarly British phenomenon. While the UK had been inexplicably captured by anti-trans bigots, and the country become a “Terf Island”, Americans had largely accepted that …
Ukraine cannot win this war
Since war broke out in Ukraine, Greek politician and economist Yanis Varoufakis has been accused of being a Putin apologist, a “Westsplainer”, and a conspiracy theorist. But what does he really think about this conflict? Freddie Sayers spoke to him …
Putin is following the Bosnia playbook
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is widely seen as drawing the curtain on the era of Western domination that defined the Nineties. Yet the End of History was not a peaceful time: the conflict now raging in Eastern Europe was …
How philosophy sacrificed the truth
Back when I was a graduate student in the Nineties, first at St Andrews University and then at Leeds, philosophy departments were terrifying places. Seminar rooms often felt like amphitheatres.
Every week, the same ritual would unfold in the senior …
Why does Boris want to nuke the UK?
Being a wealthy man from a wealthy family, the concept of being forced into debt may be hard for the Chancellor to grasp. But with a looming cost-of-living crisis linked to soaring energy bills threatening to overshadow May’s local elections, …
Novelists are afraid of class
When I teach the writing of fiction, I often start with a topic for discussion. The question is this: if you glimpsed a person for half a second, in passing, what would you know about him or her? If you …
Is Jamie Wallis exploiting his trauma?
The phrase “I’m exhausted” has been nagging at me. You hear it often from woke activists in their twenties or thirties. “I’m a privileged White cis gender woman and *I’m* fucking exhausted by the amount of Trans-hate I encounter daily”, …
France’s demographic civil war
When I was 15, back in the very early Eighties, I spent the best part of a summer is a sleepy corner of “la France profonde”. The family I stayed with were hard-up members of the nobility, trying to earn …
Why we fear dead bodies
It is almost exactly two years ago that we were first asked to stand on our doorsteps to clap for NHS staff. As the weeks went on, the target of our applause was widened: to healthcare workers and emergency services, …
How the Ukraine war saved Orbán
Budapest
In the 12 years of rule that have followed three landslide electoral victories, Viktor Orbán, now Europe’s longest-serving leader, has successfully reshaped Hungary in his own image: too successfully, in the eyes of both the weak and fractured opposition …