When the great American critic HL Mencken wrote his great essay “The Sahara of the Bozart” in 1917, lamenting the absence of high-level American minds equal to those of Europe, especially in the South, he badly missed the mark. America …
Why I am now a Christian
In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian”. It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South …
Jerusalem is Israel’s future
For a brief moment, when I was younger, I found myself in Jerusalem. By day I studied the Talmud with my teacher, and by night I wandered its streets.
I would veer into the dark alleyways of the Old City, …
The narcissism of the Never Trumpers
The “fascist coup” narrative, a self-regarding genre of literature popular with the “Never Trump” wing of the centre-right, has enjoyed a bumper crop in 2023. Earlier this year, as the legal challenges against Trump mounted and his popularity paradoxically surged, …
French feminism is being corrupted
Five summers ago, in June 2018, a short clip from Arrêt Sur Images, a French talk show, went viral after a balding, bearded male reprimanded the host for calling him a man. “Je ne suis pas un homme, monsieur,” Arnaud …
Berlusconi blinded the Left
In 1994, when Berlusconi launched his political party Forza Italia, I was 12 years old. At the time, the last thing I was interested in was politics, and yet Il Cavaliere, as he was known, soon became a part of …
In defence of Miss France
It seems that things are going to the dogs across the Channel. It’s not just that the French birth rate, educational standards, and the homegrown car industry are all in decline; nor even that the homicide rate, Americanisms, and fast-food …
Anders Tegnell’s lesson for the Covid Inquiry
After thousands of hours of political inquisition and motivated reasoning, the UK Covid Inquiry has finally allowed mention of the single most important control group in the global lockdown experiment: Sweden. A written submission by former State Epidemiologist of Sweden …
PG Wodehouse scoffed at politics
A certain kind of reader is unlikely to accept any kind of argument for P. G. Wodehouse’s Mike. Set in a private, all-boys school, the novel features a main character, the Mike of the title, with few distinguishing traits beyond …
The madness behind the battle for Bakhmut
“The objective for today is to come back alive.” Yevgeny is a young commando from the “Mad Pack”, a special forces unit that has been fighting in Bakhmut since November. His words are familiar — lacquered with that mix of …
The political power of Deano
“Imagine a village consisting of a few shops, a public-house, and a cluster of dirty little houses, all at the base of what looked at first like an active volcano,” wrote JB Priestley after visiting Shotton Colliery in 1933. The …
How the CCP infiltrated Britain
Nearly four years after reports first emerged from Wuhan of a mystery virus filling hospitals with sick patients, we are told of an “unidentified pneumonia” circulating in China. Unlike last time, however, a healthy number of sceptics have been paying …
The hymns not fit for children
It should have been a formality. The education committee for Somerset had already approved Day School Hymns for use by teachers in the county; now all that Bath Council had to do was nod the thing through for schools in …
Zola understood our lust for shopping
The most fun I ever had spending money was during a shopping spree at a toy store. It was almost Hanukkah, which falls near my birthday, and my parents asked me what they should get me for both occasions. I …
The Labour Party has a woman problem
Domestic abuse is about control and power and silencing someone. It can take many forms. A text. A glance. A threat disguised as a promise. The idea is to manipulate you; to paralyse you.
I have lived through an abusive …