What’s in a name? Only 350 feet wide and nine miles long, the “Philadelphi Corridor” is little more than a speck. Yet it has, in recent weeks, assumed outsized proportions. Before October 7, this tiny sliver of land separating Egypt …
How Fritz Lang invented fantasy
It’s one of the sad facts of our miserable climate of miserable prognostications about the state of the cinema that it continually obscures a simple truth: movies are very young. Compared to most artforms, the cinema is still in its …
The night Trump lost the election
Last night’s presidential debate was described as “the most consequential presidential debate in modern American history” so many times that no one bothered to ask just why that was so. For one thing, it could only be described as consequential …
How culture warriors exploited Creative Scotland
Those London theatre lovers living south of Watford might not have noticed, but Scotland’s small but lively cultural sphere has recently become the latest contested territory in the UK’s unrelenting culture wars. It was revealed last week that a part-time …
The intellectual dishonesty of Shlomo Sand
I saw Shlomo Sand speak once. It was at a public event in 2008, but I remember him well: a preening man with a leather jacket and a manner of such monumental self-regard that he reminded me of an Israeli …
The underground railroad for Russian deserters
Right at the start of our conversation, Sergei is keen to emphasise that he never killed anyone. “I wouldn’t be able to live if I was responsible for hurting anyone,” insists the former Russian soldier, who spent several weeks on …
Trump vs Harris is just a front
When Donald Trump and Kamala Harris step into the ring this evening, America will be treated to an illusion. For the past month, we’ve been told that tonight’s showdown in Pennsylvania will be pivotal — that, finally, the nation will …
In defence of stereotypes
Everyone seems to agree that you shouldn’t put people in boxes. Men and women are uniquely individual, and therefore not to be stereotyped. Why not, however, isn’t so clear. It can’t be because all stereotypes are negative and offensive. The …
Why couldn’t the UK deal with the Isis matchmaker?
When Tooba Gondal, Britain’s notorious “Isis matchmaker”, callously celebrated the November 2015 Paris attacks, she couldn’t have possibly known that her destiny was to return to that great city as a resident of its penal system. Last December, Gondal was …
The annihilation of Michel Houellebecq
In Michel Houellebecq’s startlingly long new novel, the 735-page Anéantir, our Everyman protagonist Paul Raison is returned by family illness to his childhood bedroom. There, in typical Houellbecqian fashion, he jabs us with a completely heterodox, completely confident provocation: Matrix …
Labour should ignore its immigration extremists
In his influential 1939 treatise against utopian thinking in foreign policy, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, E.H. Carr made an analogy with domestic politics that seemed so obvious at the time it needed neither elaboration nor justification. “It is not the …
The next President will be beholden to regional elites
It has become conventional wisdom in the waning days of Biden’s presidency to say that America has launched a new era in economics. Concepts like industrial policy, trade protectionism, antitrust enforcement and child subsidies — all once verboten during the …
Why does hot girl summer have to end?
We are all used to hearing about the dire plight of Gen Z. They are addicted to social media. Fragile and over-therapised. Obsessed with identity. Activists without wisdom. Reactive without nuance. That’s how the story goes. But the animal spirit …
The unholy alliance of Macron and Le Pen
Macron has faced relentless criticism for his decision to call a snap parliamentary election in July. Having said he wanted a “clarification” from the people after Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) surged to first place in the European Parliament elections, …
What incels get wrong about Fight Club
Everyone knows the famous exchange in The Wild One (1953) even if they haven’t seen the movie — a brassy dame in a blonde beehive asking Marlon Brando “What are you rebelling against?”, a slightly pouty-looking Marlon Brando answering, “Whattaya …