At the apex of the flyover somewhere to the north of Abidjan, crowds lined the roads, dancing, singing, blowing whistles and vuvuzelas. A shirtless man painted in the orange, white and green of the Ivorian flag tottered into the middle …
How I became a target in the gender-critical civil war
A few nights ago, I attended a gathering at which friends and acquaintances were encouraged to mingle and chat. At one point I found myself discussing the films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz with a gentleman in advanced middle-age. I pointed …
Caught up in the gender-critical civil war
A few nights ago, I attended a gathering at which friends and acquaintances were encouraged to mingle and chat. At one point I found myself discussing the films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz with a gentleman in advanced middle-age. I pointed …
China is winning the battle for the Red Sea
Hardly for the first time, remote Arab tribesmen are reshaping the world. Piratical attacks on international shipping by Yemen-based Houthi rebels have created a significant security crisis in the Red Sea. The world’s largest shipping lines have been forced to …
In defence of grumpy old men
In every culture, in every era, you will find the archetype of the cantankerous old man. He’s ubiquitous in cinema — the aged, scowling hero of Gran Torino; the feuding codgers of Grumpy Old Men; the dementia-stricken patriarch of The …
The unreported anarchy of British courts
In truth, the old maxim that justice “must be seen to be done” has nothing to do with the rights of spectators or reporters in court. It comes from a judgement established in 1924 during a dangerous driving case, in …
Why is the NHS hiring fake doctors?
When 25-year-old Benedict Peters showed up in A&E in 2022 with chest pain, he was discharged with a diagnosis of gastritis and anxiety. That night, he died from an aortic dissection, a fatal bleed from the largest artery in the …
The cost of Russia’s collapsing empire
Ukraine’s counteroffensive has stalled, and Vladimir Putin is once again blustering as if Russia were a first-rate power. The problem, paradoxically, is that it is not. The damage his country has sustained throughout the course of the Ukraine war has …
We are all prisoners in Plato’s Cave
Some meditations on the human condition blaze with truth even after millennia. And perhaps none more so than Plato’s Cave. Plato assumes what was self-evident to both the simple and the wise from the beginning of civilisation until just yesterday: …
How Britain killed off its musical tribes
When the Teddy boys burst onto the scene at the start of the drab Fifties, they established the template for all subcultures to follow. There have always been ultra-loyal music fans of individual artists, but this was something else: a …
King Charles and the twilight of the Boomers
God Save The King. The announcement yesterday that King Charles is receiving treatment for cancer has sent another tremor through a Britain that feels frailer by the day.
And yet, this reminder of our King’s frailty, at 75, also stands …
The future is barbarian
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have been on many minds recently, not least because neither has been working out the way our politicians and pundits insisted they would. As a result, a genuine revolution in military affairs …
Everyone loses in America’s misinformation war
The below forms part of the testimony Lee Fang delivered to the House Select Committee on Weaponization on 6 February, 2024.
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Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett, esteemed members of the Select Committee,
As an independent investigative journalist, it is …
E.P. Thompson, Marxist rebel
Edward Palmer Thompson was an unlikely Little Englander. He was born 100 years ago into the sort of polymathic, globe-trotting family that this country no longer seems to produce. His parents met in Jerusalem in 1918, where his mother taught …
The burden of Jewish privilege
We Jews have an old joke about the Holocaust: Abie Cohen, after being gassed and burnt in Auschwitz, goes to heaven. After a few weeks of waiting patiently, he eventually gets to see God and demands to know if the …