“Lying naked with her chin in her hand, reading poetry.” Jesus, here we go. I feel my hackles rise as I’m thrown into an arena where it’s me versus an imaginary other reader, who I needn’t bother describing, who likes …
The war for the Irish language
Last Thursday, a clutch of Irish-language (Gaeilge) activists burst into Belfast’s gleaming new station shouting “Tír gan Teanga, Tír gan Anam (A country without a language is a country without a soul)”. “What’s this all about?” a woman asked a …
The anti-Israel cartoonist dividing Britain’s art crowd
Promising “kick-ass superheroes, future worlds, fantastical creatures and zombies”, the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (LICAF), should begin next weekend in Cumbria. Yet a row about a Palestinian artist accused of antisemitism threatens to derail the prestigious graphic art event.…
The tragic life of Brian Clough
The winter of 1962-63 was bitter. So many football matches were postponed that the FA Cup final had to be put back three weeks. In Sunderland, Boxing Day was raw and cold, “the kind of day when seagulls flew backwards …
What Orwell owes to Yevgeny Zamyatin
It’s difficult to imagine this quiet bucolic corner of London being the point of origin of the defining dystopia of modern times. Yet, according to literary folklore, it was here in a Canonbury beer garden, in the shadow of a …
Inside Starmer’s feuding No. 10
“Who is gripping?” With these three words, the late Jeremy Heywood ruled Whitehall. The demand would stir his aides into action: calls would be made, emails sent, each carrying the imprimatur of the Cabinet Secretary and with it, the person …
Inside Starmer’s feuding No. 10
“Who is gripping?” With these three words, the late Jeremy Heywood ruled Whitehall. The demand would stir his aides into action: calls would be made, emails sent, each carrying the imprimatur of the Cabinet Secretary and with it, the person …
Forget what you know about Lucy Letby
The timing of this week’s public inquiry into “the events at the Countess of Chester Hospital”, and the growing suspicion that Lucy Letby’s convictions are unsafe, inadvertently throws up a dramatic forking of two possible worlds. In the first, the …
Prince Harry: the millennial’s millennial
Somewhere in Montecito on Sunday, a balding Englishman will celebrate his birthday over a bold Tignanello, clinking glasses with his glamorous Californian wife. Like Footloose, Agadoo and the original Apple Mac, Prince Harry is turning 40 — leaving behind a …
The Baroness making a fortune from Net Zero
In the realm of science, few politicians are more powerful than Baroness Brown. As the chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, her remit is to consider the boundaries of Britain’s future: from AI to medicine, from …
What is your digital mask hiding?
Last Saturday, the YouTube personality Nikocado Avocado surprised his 4.27 million followers by losing more than 100kg overnight. Having gained notoriety via “mukbang” — that is, filming himself eating — his audience was amazed to find he’d gone from morbidly …
How culture warriors exploited Creative Scotland
Those London theatre lovers living south of Watford might not have noticed, but Scotland’s small but lively cultural sphere has recently become the latest contested territory in the UK’s unrelenting culture wars. It was revealed last week that a part-time …
In defence of stereotypes
Everyone seems to agree that you shouldn’t put people in boxes. Men and women are uniquely individual, and therefore not to be stereotyped. Why not, however, isn’t so clear. It can’t be because all stereotypes are negative and offensive. The …
Why couldn’t the UK deal with the Isis matchmaker?
When Tooba Gondal, Britain’s notorious “Isis matchmaker”, callously celebrated the November 2015 Paris attacks, she couldn’t have possibly known that her destiny was to return to that great city as a resident of its penal system. Last December, Gondal was …
Labour should ignore its immigration extremists
In his influential 1939 treatise against utopian thinking in foreign policy, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, E.H. Carr made an analogy with domestic politics that seemed so obvious at the time it needed neither elaboration nor justification. “It is not the …