Passing Observations 194

    The Office for National Statistics reckons that 5.6 million immigrants will come to England over the next decade. And 3.4 million tax-paying, largely white English people will leave in despair. Those are the official figures. The real figures will, inevitably,

The impossible truth about Afghanistan

In “The Impossible Fact”, the 20th-century German poet Christian Morgenstern tells the story of an academic who undergoes a traumatising experience. He staggers home, wraps damp cloths around his forehead and collapses into his armchair to process what has happened. …

My First Operation

We were all waiting. The patient, already anaesthetised, was lying on the operating table. The anaesthetist, sitting at the head of the table, presiding like father at Sunday lunch, kept one eye on the machine by his side and the …