There’s a scene in Sunset Boulevard in which Norma Desmond, the former silent film star, is watching a movie in her Hollywood mansion. It’s one of her own movies, of course — they’re all she ever watches — because in …
How the Nineties are haunting millennials
There’s a scene in the new apocalypse thriller Leave the World Behind in which a 27-year-old character describes the show Friends as “almost nostalgic for a time that never existed”. Her lip curls with contempt as she says it, and …
Marriage has been divorced from love
Because there is nothing Americans will not politicise, marriage is now at the heart of a culture war.
On the traditionalist side, a loose assortment of classical conservatives, terminally online reactionary trad types, and the odd dissident feminist have coalesced …
Barbie is Fight Club for women
Exactly how old is Barbie, anyway? I speak not of Barbie the product — though her birth in 1959 is a fascinating story — but Barbie the person, the character, the entity who exists in undying hot pink perpetuity, in …
The greatest generational conflict
Ever since the phrase “the generation gap” was minted — by a headline writer at Look during the youth rebellion of the Sixties — trouble has been brewing. Today, there are two generational conflicts in play around the world: one …
How landlords became monsters
Everyone under the age of 40 has their landlord horror story. We trade them, like old war wounds. My own, in retrospect, is rather pleasingly metaphorical, something of a capsule (or cubicle) scatological comedy. At one point, as part of …
British renters are losers
My renting life is now on the verge of eclipsing my non-renting life: I have been paying monthly rent for 17 years. As a millennial, I am of the first major generation to get to this age and not be …
Did Medieval women have it better?
Geoffrey Chaucer imagined a woman who even now feels progressive. She had a job, married several times, chose her own partners, inherited their money when they died, went on holiday without her husband, enjoyed having sex and also loved talking …
How the Online Right gave up on reality
The millennial generation is beginning to show its age. This overeducated and underemployed generation, raised on social media, once sought solace from its diminished life opportunities behind video game controllers, computer screens, and smartphones. Even for those with good prospects, …
Bret Easton Ellis: ‘My generation wanted to be offended’
Earlier this week, Bret Easton Ellis visited The UnHerd Club to celebrate the publication of The Shards, his first novel in 13 years. Below is an edited transcript of his conversation with Jacob Furedi.
Jacob Furedi: Bret, you’ve spoken …
Millennial Catholics are faking it
Christians of convenience are nothing new. As early as the second century, the sect-hopping Peregrinus milked Christians for money and fame, until they found out he was eating food sacrificed to pagan idols. But there is something shocking about the …
The problem with being uptight
It’s surely unfair to expect a brilliant scientist to also be a brilliant author. Some of the most valuable books I’ve encountered in my research have been the dreariest to read: repetitive, dense and joyless prose turning what could have …
A sex room won’t save your marriage
Looking back, I feel profoundly pleased that I was a hottie when I was: after the Pill but before AIDS. The Seventies brought to the masses the sexual free-for-all that the “Swinging Sixties” had only really offered the few. A …
Who would be a young Tory?
Aspiration is a word forgotten by the Conservative Party. It’s certainly not a word that’s forgotten by me. In only one generation, my family went from being born in council housing and needing to muck out the pigs before heading …
Why millennials are dropping out
With inflation soaring, trust in governments plummeting, and the global economy teetering on the brink of collapse, one might expect to see the masses out in the streets, calling for the heads of their rulers. But instead of rage and …