When Donald Trump first visited Paris when President in 2017, he appeared as something of a passing curiosity; the apparent manifestation of America’s inexorable decline, captured in all its spray-tanned vulgarity. Seven years later he has returned to Paris as …
Why we want regal overlords
Big statues, fanfares, fancy costumes and military parades: we Brits don’t do that stuff. Since 1945, Europeans have considered it all in very poor taste. The kind of leaders who go in for it are tyrants like the late Muammar …
The Menendez brothers prey on empathy
On 20 August 1989, 21-year-old Lyle Menendez and his 18-year-old brother, Erik, burst into their parents’ Beverly Hills mansion and shot them dead. They later claimed to have done it because their parents had sexually abused them. In 1996, following …
Are you a board game loser?
What is your most shameful memory of an argument over a board game? Though the details are blurry, mine involves the mid Nineties, a sister, a boyfriend, a bottle of tequila and a game of Trivial Pursuit. The subsequent emotional …
Spotify Wrapped will expose you
My favourite part of Spotify Wrapped day is psychoanalysing my peers. Oh, your top artist was Alice in Chains, was it? When was the last time you spoke to your father? Lana Del Rey is pretty high on your list, …
The truth about the fertility crisis
The question of whether or not to have children has never seemed so political. Sensing a fertility crisis on the horizon, the populist Right are embracing pro-natalism. Elon Musk, father of 11, warns of the mass extinction of entire nations, …
Jeremy Clarkson: populist tribune
Capturing a glimpse of Napoleon at the head of his Grande Armée in 1806, Hegel described him as the world soul on horseback. Today, such figures do not appear in small German towns leading revolutionary armies, but on YouTube, Spotify …
Jordan Peterson wrestles with meaning
Like every conservative intellectual, Jordan Peterson once was a man of the Left. Left-wingers were hard to come by in Seventies Alberta; Peterson grew up in what was in effect a one-party state. When he was a teenager, all but …
How humans became microplastic
This past summer, I spent a morning hunting for shrimp and prawns on a remote beach in Scotland. It was the kind of ritual interaction with nature that modern people have long prized: wading through tidal pools at the edge …
Sex strikes are hot again
There are four simple principles to South Korea’s 4B movement. These are all refusals, since the “B” stands for “bi”, meaning “no” in Korean. No heterosexual marriage (bihon). No childbirth (bichulsan). No dating men (biyeonae). No sexual relationships with men …
The Left has forgotten its philosophy
A mere glance at the headlines underscores what most working people under 40 intuit. Unfathomable wealth inequality, flat or barely improving wages, falling life expectancy, and a massive housing shortage are overturning the hard-won gains of the 20th century. And …
The cult of cuteness is revolting
When it comes to softening a stern public image, the Japanese have a special trick: just introduce a cute-looking cartoon mascot. High security prisons have them, as do the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and the Japanese Sewage Association. Such mascots have …
Will an Etsy witch find you true love?
Something wicked this way comes. Across the land, jilted maidens are engaging in digital necromancy, wreaking revenge on past lovers and using £5 spells to bewitch Hinge situationships into confessing true love. Welcome to the coven of the Etsy witch. …
The squashed birds of progress
Early in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, a magician performs a trick with a small bird which disappears in a cage flattened on the table. A small boy in the audience starts to cry, distraught that the bird was killed. The …
It’s time to re-enchant the world
The meaning of the leaf is the leaf, as I once heard Roger Scruton say. Perhaps it was an original coinage from the Sage of Sundey Hill Farm, but it has the slight feel of a Zen koan: a …