In May 1950, Philip Larkin was appointed sub-librarian at Queen’s University in Belfast. He knew little about the city, or indeed the university, but needed a change. His application for a job in London had been rejected. Belfast offered an …
Black gold fuelled the Iraq War
Even before the conspicuous absence of weapons of mass destruction shattered the pretext for the Iraq War, it was haunted by black gold. Whether oil motivated George W. Bush and his advisers’ decision to invade was part of the bitter …
Does the Right need techno-Trumpism?
One of my informal metrics for political cut-through in our synapse-frazzled age is “could you play this sentence over a bass drop and have the crowd go wild?”.
The last time a British politician managed this was early in 2020, …
The battle to control America’s mind
“How can a man in a cave out-communicate the world’s leading communications society?” wondered Richard Holbrooke, the dean of the American Diplomatic Corps, in the aftermath of 9/11. What startled Holbrooke, and presumably many of the readers of his Washington …
The corruption of California
I backed into a spot where I could watch both entrances of the Papa Johns Pizza parking lot, punctual for my rendezvous. To be safe, I had first taken a slow cruise through the lot, on the lookout for the …
Why Progress isn’t feminist
It’s now an open secret that most Instagram influencers edit their images: smoothing skin, whitening teeth and plumping curves. Last year, OnlyFans content creator Diana Deets, also known as “Coconutkitty”, was castigated for making her NSFW images and videos seem …
BlackRock’s tyrannical ESG agenda
As February turns to March, the finance world is waiting with bated breath for one of its most dubious annual traditions: The Larry Fink Annual Letter to CEOs. Since 2012, when the BlackRock chief executive wrote his first letter, the …
Who will stand against Progress?
These days he would be mobbed as an “eco-fascist”, but Edward Goldsmith would probably have been better described as a traditionalist. The founder of The Ecologist magazine, where he employed me as a naive young writer in the late Nineties, …
Are we prepared for ‘eternal war’ in Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin’s armies launched their fateful attack on Ukraine a year ago today. Tanks and troops poured across the frontier in what most Western governments feared would be a lightning thrust of fratricidal violence that would throttle Ukrainian independence. Then …
The Tories have betrayed the Caravan Dream
The anarchist commentator Michael Malice observed that conservatism is “progressivism driving the speed limit”. And perhaps he was right. When it comes to rounding savagely on your most loyal voters, the Labour Party is the undisputed trailblazer — but the …
‘Absolute victory over Russia isn’t possible’
Few people better understand the West’s fraught relationship with Russia than Fiona Hill. Born in Bishop Auckland, she went on to study History and Russian at St Andrews before a scholarship at Harvard took her to America. From there, Hill …
Hag feminism is the future
At the beginning of the year, a scandal erupted over a TikTok trend of young women in tight clothes posting videos shaming men for hitting on them at the gym. As recently as 2018, the story would have been one …
Is the West escalating the Ukraine war?
Barely a day had gone by from Ukraine’s successful request for German Leopard-2 tanks when the government in Kyiv called on Nato countries to yet again prove their solidarity by supplying it with US-made F-16 fighter jets. While military experts …
Jonathan Raban’s final message
A week or so before he died, Jonathan Raban sent me an email:
“I apologise for my dreadful tardiness in reading your manuscript, and promise you an explanation later. Many thanks for your communiques from the ship, and you are …
Scottish nationalism will survive Sturgeon
Nicola Sturgeon has exited the stage, but the threat of Scottish independence has not. Whatever the triumphalism in London over the First Minister’s resignation yesterday, the idea that the secession crisis has ended is absurd. For the time being, the …
