The signs were there throughout his entire life that my father could not write. I can see them now but only with the benefit of hindsight and only when it is far too late. In fairness, he hid them well. …
The tyranny of a Covid amnesty
I spent the last days of innocence before Trump and Brexit heavily pregnant. Like many first-time mums, I read a lot of pregnancy books, but the one I liked most was Expecting Better. Written by Emily Oster, an economist, the …
Quentin Tarantino meets Bret Easton Ellis
For all their originality, Quentin Tarantino’s films have always been rooted in the Hollywood of his youth, pastiching and repurposing his earliest influences. Now, in his first work of non-fiction, Cinema Speculation, Tarantino returns to his influences, exploring the Seventies …
Vladimir Putin’s failed strategy
As the first 250 days of Russia’s war in Ukraine have proved again, the logic of strategy is paradoxical. It has never been linear, as in the Roman Si vis pacem para bellum: if you want peace prepare for war. …
Rishi has set himself up to fail
Despite spending the past week poring over reams of spreadsheets and briefings, Rishi Sunak faces an inescapable truth: success is already out of his reach. Sunak may have delayed today’s Halloween Budget to November 17, but that changes little. When …
Israel will never escape Netanyahu
Even before he became Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, at the age of 43, was already being called “yesterday’s man” by the Israeli media. Just five months after being elected leader of Likud, Israel’s main Right-wing party, interviewers were …
The year of the femcel
You may have already forgotten, but 2022 is supposed to be the year of the femcel. In case you have forgotten or never knew, a femcel is the female counterpart to an “incel”, or involuntarily celibate male, a woman who …
Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska nightmare
In 1982, Bruce Springsteen was at the height of his powers. Seven years earlier, his third album, Born to Run, had brought him global fame. “Springsteen is everything that has been claimed for him,” declared Rolling Stone. Critic Dave Marsh …
The revenge of the technocrats
John Gray was the prophet of the postliberal age, describing global capitalism as a false utopia as early as 1998. In his most recent writing, he has returned to geopolitics, and has described the populist moment, the pandemic, and the …
Can Sunak end the new class war?
Will Rishi Sunak hang the paedos and fund the NHS? This is, after all, the most common British political stance. Every constituency nationwide skews this way: Right on social issues, Left on the economy.
But I’ve not seen anything in …
How Big Pharma monetised depression
We are, if you believe the headlines, living in the midst of an unprecedented mental health crisis, exacerbated by the stress and isolation of the pandemic. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the end of …
Is Rishi too rich to be PM?
When Rishi Sunak, Britain’s richest MP, moves into No. 10, it will be a week since the UK’s biggest food bank announced it is running out of supplies. This contrast between wealth and poverty has not been so vivid for …
Overpopulation isn’t a threat
In the enduring thought game “Who would you host at a dinner party?”, three men sit at my table: the 21st-century’s Elon Musk and the 20th-century Huxley brothers, scientist Julian and writer Aldous. They would talk about Mars and whether …
How free should US states be?
Years ago, I visited America’s most dignified factory. A place of noise, dust and heaving trucks. And yet of higher purpose. Granite Industries of Vermont is a principal maker and supplier of headstones for the government.
The factory workers constructed …
The Tories were destined for civil war
Even in the most tense, fractious relationship there can be enormous capacity for calm: for letting things go, for tolerating each infraction for the greater good, for simply getting on with things. Eventually, though, the dam breaks into a cathartic …
