Picture this: it is 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Witchfinder General is patrolling the area in search of accused witches. The bodies of the women most recently found guilty are still hanging by their necks from the gallows; tensions …
Bret Easton Ellis: ‘My generation wanted to be offended’
Earlier this week, Bret Easton Ellis visited The UnHerd Club to celebrate the publication of The Shards, his first novel in 13 years. Below is an edited transcript of his conversation with Jacob Furedi.
Jacob Furedi: Bret, you’ve spoken …
Tár and the triumph of amoral artists
“Once I saw it, I was offended: I was offended as a woman, I was offended as a conductor, I was offended as a lesbian…”
Tár, Todd Field’s new film about an eminent female conductor, is splitting the musical crowd. …
The art of empty apologies
Everyday life is full of unwitting moral pitfalls. Overnight, formerly benign words can take on strange and harmful new meanings. It is easy to be blindsided by the rapidly changing public fortunes of activities you’ve always enjoyed — using gas …
Harry Flashman’s imperial morality
I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the times catch up with George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books. One can imagine the scene: an earnest young editor picks up a copy of the books, drawn to them by the …
The art world’s lost sense of humour
“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better, but the frog dies in the process.” Truer words than these famous ones of E.B. White’s have rarely been spoken, and so requiring an explanation for jokes has …
The Viking war on woke
The eighth day of June in the Year of Our Lord 793 dawned breezy and bright. On the coast of north-eastern England it seemed a day for strolling along the grassy cliffs and drinking in the sea air; for watching …
My ‘free speech’ college is silencing me
In 1993, I began my first teaching job at the University of Kyiv-Mohyla in newly independent Ukraine. I had been hired to teach Hobbes, Locke, and the Federalist to the sons and daughters of communist apparatchiks who had come to …
JK Rowling sees through her enemies
Fifteen years ago, on the eve of the release of the final book in the Harry Potter series, an anonymous hacker calling himself Gabriel sent the following to an anonymised email list: “Dear my brothers, Voldemort killed Hermione.”
The sender, …
The progressive puritans will fail
Fun has always carried a little bit of danger in its back pocket: there’s something radical, even anarchical, about having too much of it. “We were just having some fun” could be the thing you say to the neighbours who’ve …
Jerry Sadowitz is too good to cancel
“Jerry Sadowitz is a nasty piece of work. His venomous tirade is relentless, consisting of unabashed racism, homophobia, misogyny, antisemitism, xenophobia, and every other kind of prejudice known to humankind. If it exists, he hates it. The man is a …
Philip Larkin was a filthy genius
If literary reputations can be likened to a stock market, fluctuating on the tides of taste and time, Philip Larkin crashed in 1991. Until then he had been a strong buy, the unofficial post-war laureate, more synonymous with his time …
Keir Starmer is no saint
Given that Keir Starmer went all in on the personal failings of Boris Johnson, it cannot be unfair that questions now circle about his own personality, and whether it is suited to the office of Prime Minister. “Boring” is the …
The paranoia driving office politics
Picture a huge, poisonous fruit falling to the ground, its skin splitting open, the rancid pulp pouring out. Picture the ants discovering the mess, swarming over it, drunk on the abundance in front of them — and far too preoccupied …
How the RA uncancelled me
It has now been a year since I woke up to nearly the entire UK press in my inbox, wanting to speak to me.
The Royal Academy of Arts had just publicly announced that they would no longer stock my …
