A group of African gentlemen, all dressed in hoodies, were posted at the entrance to Berlin’s Görlitzer Park, standing around idly until I passed by. “Hey, hello, you good?” they muttered, nodding in my direction. “Need some help?” As a …
The village that made Nigel Farage
In almost all respects, life for Reform UK’s “honorary president” couldn’t be any better at the moment. About to turn 60, Nigel Farage is earning more than ever, drinking less (a third of what he used to, he told me), …
Kate is not your drama queen
Just over a decade ago, the late novelist Hilary Mantel delivered a lecture to an event at the London Review of Books and triggered national outrage. In the course of a talk on “Royal Bodies”, which ranged widely across royal …
Car dealers will decide America’s future
Ohio Republicans have a new candidate for US Senator: Bernie Moreno, who was endorsed by Donald Trump over establishment-backed Matt Dolan. With Moreno’s victory in last week’s hotly contested primary, the party’s MAGA faction has further entrenched its hold on …
The lost art of hedgelaying
Among the rural professions, we hedgelayers get an easier time of it than most. Not in a physical sense, of course. Laying hedges is skilled hard graft. By the end of the season, which runs from the first day of …
Why we musn’t ban TikTok
For the third time in just over a century, the US is, once again, in the grip of a full-blown Red Scare. The home of the “communist threat” may have changed — China rather than the Soviet Union — but …
The return of the Irish Right
“The transformation of Ireland over the last 60 years has sometimes felt as if a new world had landed from outer space on top of an old one,” wrote Fintan O’Toole, a commentator who is generally approving of this new …
Should you watch footage of terrorist attacks?
On Friday evening, an X personality called Ian Miles Cheong posted a video of Isis terrorists marauding through the entrance of a concert hall in Moscow, calmly shooting to death scores of civilians in their path. I don’t follow Cheong, …
The Dutch are facing their Holocaust demons
There is no tram line 8 in Amsterdam. You could see this as a silent admission of guilt — during the Second World War, it transported tens of thousands of Dutch Jewish people to the Westerbork transit camp, and then …
The suicide of Wales
Rising above the mouth of the vale of Neath, the smoke hangs over the village like a dejected memory, a tragic reminder of what will soon evaporate. The recently announced closure of the blast furnaces at the Port Talbot steelworks …
The suicide of Wales
Rising above the mouth of the vale of Neath, the smoke hangs over the village like a dejected memory, a tragic reminder of what will soon evaporate. The recently announced closure of the blast furnaces at the Port Talbot steelworks …
Is it time for a no-fly zone in Ukraine?
In his State of the Union speech last month, President Joe Biden told America that, while he strongly supports Ukraine against Russia’s aggression, he won’t have US troops deployed in Ukraine. “Killing Russians”, he has previously made clear, is a …
The plot against Britain’s children
Last year, the Financial Times reported from the village of Ichinono in Japan. In common with a lot of Japanese villages, Ichinono’s population is small, old and vanishing: just 53 people, most of them over retirement age. In Japan as …
How Grindr tamed gay desire
It is telling that, as we mark the 15th anniversary of Grindr, my mind immediately turns to dystopian science fiction. In E.M Forster’s 1909 short story “The Machine Stops”, our protagonists (a mother and son) exist in a twisted future …
Why we demand Kate’s sacrifice
Since the Princess of Wales withdrew from public life in January for planned abdominal surgery, her continued absence and relative Palace silence have prompted a frenzy of ever more deranged internet speculation. As the legacy press vacillated between fawning and …