American cultural cachet has long gone hand in hand with the abundance and affordability of fast food. But while it has manifested itself in strange and humorous ways, the connection runs deep. Boris Yeltsin’s visit to an Californian grocery store …
The EU cartel was designed to crush farmers
Manos, a sixth-generation farmer from Thessaly, put it to me bluntly when I asked him to explain why he was prepared to drive his tractor 400km to Athens to camp outside Parliament: “If I don’t, my farm will soon follow …
I went to New York for university – and ended up in the Mob
As an Italian-American teen growing up in the Sopranoland of New Jersey, I dreamed of getting involved in the Mob. It was the paisan equivalent of being attracted to thug life, to living dangerously and not taking orders from anyone.…
The betrayal of Benefits Street
James Turner Street in Winson Green, Birmingham, renamed Benefits Street by Channel 4 in 2014, was originally christened Osborne Street, and this makes me laugh. With its cast of depressives and drug addicts, fed and clothed by the state, and …
Alexei Navalny has no heir
When Alexei Navalny chose to board a flight to Moscow in January 2021, the opposition leader must have known his death was all but inevitable. After surviving one assassination attempt, and staring down the barrel of a long jail sentence …
Waitrose Woman will not be patronised
This Valentine’s Day brought a very special treat for middle-aged women feeling unloved and invisible. If you’re between 40 and 60, belong to the National Trust, watch Countryfile, own a dog, and care about “doing things the proper British way”, …
Why I married a British Asian
Marriages are supposed to be made in heaven — not in dilapidated local authority registry offices. My wife and I were getting a civil marriage, as our Islamic wedding the previous year, for all its ceremonial pomp, had been a …
Does our zombie economy need a recession?
“He’s more concerned about not losing a battle than he is about winning one,” said George C. Scott in his Oscar-winning performance in Patton, expressing the US general’s opinion of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Today, the same thing could be …
The myth of MAGA’s working-class roots
Surely the white working class is to blame? It’s obvious that those who stormed the US Congress on January 6, 2021, were the very same people Hillary Clinton described as “the basket of deplorables”. They’re obviously racist, sexist and xenophobic. …
Polyamory is a luxury belief
What happens when the fantasy of getting everything you want collides with cold, hard reality? Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility attempts to answer that question by plotting the love lives of two young women: the cool-headed, pragmatic Elinor Dashwood, and …
Trump is not Nato’s biggest threat
Donald Trump, we’re told, is “dumb”, “shameful” and “un-American”, at least according to President Biden. He’s a warmonger verging on a war criminal, a global threat who “intends to give Putin a greenlight for more war and violence” in Europe. …
The great deceit of Scottish nationalism
Scottish nationalism’s two defining leaders experienced an identical cycle of political boom and bust. Both were originally the objects of the most ardent public dedication; both were subject, at the end of their reigns, to prolonged investigations by a police …
Ukraine’s new cure for the horrors of war: Ketamine and MDMA
Can ketamine and MDMA help Ukrainian soldiers cope with the horrors of war? Given the urgent nationwide mental-health crisis, the Ukrainian government is warming to the radical idea. And some army units are already experimenting. The nation could soon find …
The curse of Valentine’s Day
How St Valentine came to be associated with romance is disputed. Some suggest the third-century martyr’s feast “Christianised” a Roman fertility festival — but the first mention of his day in connection with love comes more than 1,000 years after …
Egypt is Gaza’s most fickle friend
A few years ago, while reporting in Gaza, I paid a visit to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Mohammed, my fixer, wasn’t keen. The guards there, he explained, were unfriendly. Sometimes they’d fire in the air if people approached; …