Hungover with apathy, there was no champagne drunk in our household after last night’s theatre of the predictable. Starmer is in power, and the Tories are out. How did our politics become so dull?
Should there have been more dancing …
Democrats are hooked on Hillbilly Horror
When Hillary Clinton finally shuffles off this mortal coil, what words will she be remembered by? My money would be on her “basket of deplorables” comment delivered at a donor event in 2016. That was when she declared that half …
The mean girls conquering pop
Sabrina’s got that boy wrapped round her finger. Olivia knows she might sound crazy but she doesn’t care. Chappell is having a sexually explicit kinda love affair with a closeted woman. Billie is going to eat that girl for lunch, …
The Bear: a perfect drama for the Biden era
Tomorrow’s menu of television broadcast will deliver an onslaught of anger, argument and forceful articulation of two distinct visions of America’s future. No, not the presidential debate on CNN, but the season three of The Bear, on Hulu. For The …
Episode 461 – I Read The Most Dangerous Superstition (And You Can, Too!)
In the EXACT OPPOSITE of the tradition of the “I Read . . . So You Don’t Have To” series of podcasts, today James presents a read-through / exploration of a book you actually really SHOULD read: The Most Dangerous …
Politics is killing the talk show
“I’m not allowed to give any party-political views,” says Julia Hartley-Brewer, on Talk Radio, “but I’m certainly allowed to give my views.” And she goes on to do so. Because this is not the BBC, where presenters are (theoretically, at …
The trouble with political Christianity
In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus condemns those who “(either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree”. A regular critique of the nominally religious is that they claim to believe in, …
Mama Swifties need to grow up
It’s been a bumper week for middle-aged journalists enthusing about Taylor Swift. Broadsheet music critics attending the Edinburgh leg of her ongoing Eras tour seemed positively high on second-hand oestrogen fumes as they filed their encomiums. And there were further …
Gareth Southgate’s ruthless reign
The strange thing about the build-up to these Euros for England is how settled everything feels. There is some doubt at left-back, but only because Luke Shaw’s fitness is uncertain, and there is debate over who should play alongside Declan …
The vacuous politics of Franz Kafka
We have been lied to about Kafka. Our received image is that of a morose manic depressive, a gloomy and sickly bundle of nerves hacking away at his craft in isolation, like some Lana del Rey avant la lettre. But …
Don’t be terrified of Pale Fire
Pale Fire is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. It is so great it is terrifying to write about. This is not something I would normally confess, but in this case it seems better to just come out …
The night I conquered Berghain
There are few things in life more satisfying than hearing your own voice blasted out of a giant sound system in the bowels of a German sex club. What a glorious scene to soundtrack. People being tortured in public for …
Ridicule is nothing to be scared of
My daughter started cutting herself when she was in the eighth grade. By the ninth, she had scars on both her wrists and her thighs, shallow ones, but visible. Covid lockdowns were beginning to end, but they had taken their …
John Betjeman had the last laugh
“Any fool can make money these days”, says Colonel Cargill in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, “and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money.” “T. S. Eliot”, ex-P.F.C. …
Britain’s forgotten Battle of the Beaches
The headlines were gratifyingly sensational: “Beach Terror”; “Battle of the Beaches”; “Charge of the Mods at Margate”. It was the Whitsun weekend, May 1964, and the national press was thrilled to discover the existence of hitherto unknown tribes of youth, …