Why is Greta Thunberg wearing a keffiyeh? The Swedish activist is the poster-girl for climate change. The keffiyeh, though, symbolises a wholly different cause: solidarity with Palestinians in the current conflict with Israel. What does that have to do with …
The battle for Thamesmead
Maybe the best-known fact about Thamesmead is that, in 1971, it provided the setting for one of the most memorable scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s film, A Clockwork Orange. Alex DeLarge (played by Malcolm McDowell) is shown walking along Binsey Walk …
The Portal has revealed the best of mankind
This, as some will say, is why we can’t have nice things. The Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys has set up an installation that creates a “portal” between a street in Dublin and one in Manhattan. A giant sculpture containing an …
The betrayal of Ukraine’s occupied villages
Ukrainian villages hold a special place in the region’s collective imagination. Nikolai Gogol, one of Russian Empire’s foundational authors, established them as a favourite place of demons, witches and the undead. Today, they remain a haven for magical realism and …
Ozempic has shrunk the American Dream
Much has been made of Ozempic face. The eponymous visage resulting from monthly injections of a weight-dissolving amino acid has generated endless fodder for social media and the tabloids, which have revelled in the grotesqueries of John Goodman, Robbie Williams …
Why Gen Z has killed the Pill
Young women pack out Vauxhall’s pubs on a sunny summer evening. They chat over Diet Cokes, pilsners and passion-fruit-flavoured vapes. Many smoke rollies, some do ket and cocaine. Eyes rarely widen at the mention of such things; bring up the …
Putin’s ruthless new plan to win
Over his 24 years in charge, Vladimir Putin has filled his cabinets with an array of mostly indistinguishable and eminently replaceable politicians. Some have lasted for just a few months in the upper echelons of the Kremlin machine, but the …
A Trump dynasty will swiftly implode
With Oedipal drama never far from America’s political consciousness, it was only a matter of a time before Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron, was thrust under the spotlight. Would he, the nation’s pundits speculated last week, at the tender age …
The fall of France’s sacred monsters
The French version of MeToo is coming to Cannes this year, and it’s going to be a very different kind of film festival. A reckoning is in the air, one that has been decades in the making. The actress Judith …
How Habitat made Britain’s middle class
An elegantly dressed woman is polishing her nails, looking into the camera with a kind of feline arrogance. Before her on the dressing table lies a beautiful pair of hairbrushes, while in the background a young man is making the …
Can the Left reclaim free trade?
For the past half century, the Right has been the self-appointed guardian of the free market. In one of her first acts as Conservative leader in 1975, Margaret Thatcher strode into a meeting and banged a copy of Friedrich Hayek’s …
America’s most embarrassing man
Spring, the season of rebirth, is as good a moment as any to review the second lives of the formerly cancelled. Some are faring better than others: Louis C.K., for one, is fully back in business, albeit after taking a …
How Eurovision became a carnival of nationalism
As the protests in Malmo over Israel’s inclusion in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, like the anguished defences of taking part by British and Irish contestants show, the kitschy spectacle is an inherently geopolitical format. In the interests of fairness …
Safetyism doesn’t belong on campus
I have just spent a week in the US: one in which the main news stories were not about Gaza, but rather about university encampments and occupations protesting what is happening in Gaza. Everyone seemed fascinated by this strange shadow …
Westminster is devolving itself out of existence
In 1707, union with Scotland was the project of the Whigs, and Humza Yousaf’s unlikely fall from power last month is a vindication of their pet theory of history. Whig history: the idea that events are running irresistibly in one …