This week I had the pleasure of going to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. I say ‘the pleasure’ but visiting the Pitt Rivers was never precisely a pleasure. Twenty years ago, as an undergraduate, the collection was something of a rite of initiation. The place, filled with strange and wondrous objects, was famed above all
It started as a small red shadow on my nose that gradually began to spread as the inflammation took hold. Soon the lesion was painful. A golden crust appeared and my suspicions were confirmed: impetigo. Impetigo is an incredibly infectious skin condition – and if left untreated, it can scar. Topical antibiotics – fucidin ointment
The women of Voronezh are very busy these days. Across the Russian city, aunties are busy sewing boots and winter clothing. Relatives are busy crowdfunding for night goggles and drones. Wives are busy demonstrating outside military bases. Mothers are busy making preparations to travel 150 miles southwest where they will cross the border into Ukraine
American conservatives like to say that the way to stop Donald Trump in 2024 is to hit him from the right. Compared with his own political movement, they argue, Trump has always been something of a squish when it comes to issues such as Covid vaccines, gay marriage, criminal justice, or border control. He never
If you think your life is stressful it’s good to reflect on what poor René Artois went through each week in ’Allo ’Allo!, the 1980s BBC sitcom set during the German occupation of France. RAF pilots hidden in his mother-in-law’s cupboard upstairs, German officers in the café downstairs, Herr Otto Flick of the Gestapo likely
Kabul An insurgency has once again started in Afghanistan – and this time, the Taliban is the target. Since the Americans left Kabul last year, high-profile Taliban figures have been the victims of 220 remote explosive and suicide attacks, one of which took place the day before I arrived in the capital in October. A
It’s getting hard to escape low emission zones. In Birmingham, Oxford and Bristol – and pretty soon the whole of London – unless your vehicle is squeaky clean, you are going to have to pay every day that you drive. London–based readers probably know by now of Transport for London’s plans to expand its £12.50-a-day
A very strange parliamentary rebellion has been taking place with Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and dozens of other Tory MPs demanding an end to the ban on onshore wind farms. Wind power is cheap and getting cheaper, they argue. And surely, if we’re engaged in an energy war with Russia, we need all the power
The extraordinarily brave anti-CCP protestors have been striking up ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ from Les Misérables in the streets of many cities. A song written in 1980 for a musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel has become an unlikely rallying cry in present-day China. Like all the most effective protest songs, ‘Do
