In 2008, at a birthday party in Fulham, a 26-year-old aspiring portrait painter met the adjutant of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment. As the section of the British Army that performs ceremonial duties with horses, the regiment is often judged …
How the British conquered Majorca
In the mid-Twenties, the author Ada Harrison visited Majorca and discovered that it had “fallen to Britain”. Majorca had “become one of those places which, the English say, are being ruined by the English”. The result was that the Hotel …
Escaping the Seventies class war
It happened in Teignmouth. Drizzly Devon on a summer’s day in the early Seventies. We’d come back to the coach park early, Mum and me, having explored the town. In a shack at the gate was a man selling Mars …
America’s fake caste war
If you listen to NPR or read The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Washington Post, you might think that Indians who live in the US, immigrants and their native-born children, are determined to impose the subcontinent’s caste system …
The Queen’s secret history
There is no more poignant phrase among the posh and skint than the acronym FHB: “Family Hold Back”. It’s issued on social occasions, when some expensive delicacy has been procured for a celebration, but funds are short, the supply is …
Stella Creasy’s bourgeois feminism
In his Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, Gustave Flaubert alphabetised some of the cliches and platitudes common among the French bourgeoisie during the 19th century. His aim, in his own words, was “the historical glorification of everything generally approved”. Under “Bandits”, …
The failure of May 1968
“What defines our public life today is boredom”. That was a Le Monde front-page headline in March 1968. Two months later, a revolution would erupt that would shake the foundations of the Fifth Republic, divide France, and alter its history …
How the Democrats became the party of the rich
Ever since Joe Biden’s election, the media has displayed an almost obsessive interest in the Democratic Party’s dwindling popularity among the working class, and its booming support among affluent professionals. The trend has been so dramatic that some Republicans have …
Can the Secret Barrister tell the truth?
“Actually the judge’s analysis of the applicable guidelines is wholly unimpeachable. You’re welcome.” Legal Twitter’s centrist bellwether The Secret Barrister heard your petit bourgeois whining about criminals being given nothing more than a slap on the wrist and is making …
America has captured France
France is no longer the country of Notre-Dame, nor the country of De Gaulle, where the Concorde was built and a broad middle-class prospered. To understand this moment of profound transition, you have to look past the results of last …
Novelists are afraid of class
When I teach the writing of fiction, I often start with a topic for discussion. The question is this: if you glimpsed a person for half a second, in passing, what would you know about him or her? If you …
Justin Trudeau’s phoney dictatorship
When Justin Trudeau invoked emergency powers to quell protests against mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations this week, it was another sign that for Western liberal democracy, business as usual is over. This is the first time Canada’s Emergencies Act has ever been …
What Biden gets wrong about race
Glenn Loury is an economist, author, academic, and one of the most perceptive critics of the progressive upsurge in politics and media.
Freddie Sayers spoke to Glenn about Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg, Joe Biden’s new Supreme Court Justice, and …
Has Fuccboi killed literature?
By the drowsy standards of the undead American literary world, criticism of Fuccboi, the debut novel of 30-year-old Sean Thor Conroe, has been strangely polarised. The Washington Post hailed it as “its generation’s coming-of-age novel”; Gawker’s review, “More Like Suckboi,” …
Has Fuccboi killed literature?
By the drowsy standards of the undead American literary world, criticism of Fuccboi, the debut novel of 30-year-old Sean Thor Conroe, has been strangely polarised. The Washington Post hailed it as “its generation’s coming-of-age novel”; Gawker’s review, “More Like Suckboi,” …