“The 2016 election cycle will be remembered for many things, but for those who work in politics, it may be best remembered as the year that political data reached maturity.”
Andrew Therriault
In 2004, 22-year old Andrew Therriault wanted to …
The lunacy of Child Liberation
Lionel Shriver’s latest novel, Mania, starts from the wild and wacky premise of a world in which “the last civil rights battle” is being fought against discrimination on the grounds of intelligence, and the “s-word” is as taboo there as …
Polyamory is a luxury belief
What happens when the fantasy of getting everything you want collides with cold, hard reality? Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility attempts to answer that question by plotting the love lives of two young women: the cool-headed, pragmatic Elinor Dashwood, and …
In defence of grumpy old men
In every culture, in every era, you will find the archetype of the cantankerous old man. He’s ubiquitous in cinema — the aged, scowling hero of Gran Torino; the feuding codgers of Grumpy Old Men; the dementia-stricken patriarch of The …
Twilight has made monsters of us
Fifteen years ago, in a world rattled by economic turmoil and facing impending recession, one of the most influential phenomena of our time emerged — an issue that would dominate the discourse, capture the intellect, and shape the political destinies …
Where is the Left today?
There is something presumptuous lurking in the very phrase, “the Left”. Under a show of cosmopolitan inclusion, the term hides a reality of unconscious parochialism. The parochialism is both geographical and historical in nature.
First there is the implicit geographical …
Israel and the identity trap
Yascha Mounk is one of the foremost critics of the potent new ideology that has swept the globe — variously labelled the social justice movement, “woke” and identity politics. In his new book, The Identity Trap, he takes on this …
The Age of the Museum is over
A decade ago, I spent more months than originally desired living in the bush of Sudan’s remote and war-torn Blue Nile state with SPLA-N rebels from the Uduk tribe, whose 20,000 odd members had found themselves stranded, by an accident …
How the identity cult captured America
We live in a time of ideological exhaustion. Our doctrines and ideals lie broken in pieces all around us and never fit into a whole. Jagged bits of Marxism and anarchism, nationalism and liberalism, clutter the landscape, tear at our …
The dilemma of displaying corpses
The last weeks of Charles Byrne’s life were nightmarish. Known as the Irish Giant, the seven-foot seven-inch man from Ulster had made his way in 1782 to London, where he earned money by exhibiting himself as a freak. By the …
The betrayal of white working-class men
Cards on the table: I’m a rampant opponent of white, bourgeois, male privilege. Events such as the Coronation, or another Biden-Trump stand-off, pull this lunacy into sharp focus. Yes, these ludicrous and deranged media-driven circuses may have little to do …
How Alcoholics Anonymous lost its way
Even people who have never had a drinking problem know that Alcoholics Anonymous has 12 steps. You admit you’re powerless over alcohol (Step One), for instance, and apologise to people who’ve been harmed by your drinking (Step Nine). But fewer …
Lionel Shriver: ‘I benefited from wokeness’
Lionel Shriver visited The UnHerd Club this week to talk about sensitivity readers, the cowardice that’s infected publishing, and why she’s determined to keep offending people. Below is an edited transcript of her conversation with Katie Law, UnHerd’s Books Editor.…
What authors hide about sensitivity readers
Although created with good intentions, the practice of sensitivity reading has a way of tipping over into absurdity — the most recent example being Anthony Horowitz’s new book, which features a Native American character. It was dinged for two instances …
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. …