In all the controversy about the eurozone and Greece, it is easy to ignore one simple fact: that the bailouts and succession of crisis summits are creating an unstoppable momentum towards a United States of Europe. Three weeks ago, Angela Merkel indicated very clearly her direction of travel. The eurozone crisis is, for her, the
How can we help the talented writer Rachel Cusk to overcome the extraordinary hurt she has suffered as a consequence of losing her family and, far more importantly, her feminist identity? Mrs Cusk has been explaining, at some length, and repeatedly, to like-minded souls at the Guardian the anguish occasioned by the apparent disappearance of
This goes to print on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. So allow me to pitch in to February’s religion-versus-secularism debate from a new direction. As an unbeliever I wish to complain on behalf of serious religious belief. Faith is being defended by the wrong people, in the wrong way. ‘Faith’ means faith. Doubt
We all know that the time before we were born was a golden age when men were manlier, women lovelier, civilisation more civilised, culture more edifying, values more valued and so on. But what if it isn’t actually true? What if, say, it turned out that Winston Churchill was damn near as slippery and unprincipled
This column is written from St Andrews, where our son is in his last year as an undergraduate. It is the most perfect university town I know. Held in on two sides by the Firth of Tay and the sea, and by the famed golf course on the third, it can scarcely expand at all.
One consequence of the Greek crisis — in which default remains a strong possibility despite the latest bail-out, and either way the Greek economy will be dead for a decade — must surely be a wave of Greek migrants looking for work across the EU. And since they won’t find a welcome between Macedonia and
