Columns

Poor Julian Assange. Call me a contrarian but I’m genuinely starting to feel sorry for the guy. He’s just made such a mess of his life, hasn’t he? And with such promise. Only a few short years ago he was the world’s most prominent anti-everything activist, with hair like an indie guitarist, feted and worshipped

Having written (for a Times diary) a few sentences about consciousness in robots, I settled back to study readers’ responses in the online commentary section. They added little. I was claiming there had been no progress since Descartes and Berkeley in the classic philosophical debate about how we know ‘Other Minds’ exist; and that there

For my 49th birthday treat, I went to see Shakespeare in Love at the Noël Coward theatre in London. Expensive but worth it: spry, funny, uplifting and moving but also, for all the surface froth, quite a deep meditation on the creative process and the enduring power of art. What everyone secretly loves best about

I was attacked by a swan the other day, as I walked along the bank of the River Stour in Kent. The creature climbed out of the water and lunged towards me, wings puffed up, making this guttural and hate-filled coughing noise. I kicked out at its stupid neck and told it to fuck off

There’s a little bit of a fascist in all of us. For some, the tragedy of human want may provoke an impatient urge to expropriate and centralise for the more efficient use of economic resources. Others, alarmed at the world’s exploding population, may be attracted by calls for a programme of mass compulsory sterilisation. But

This is to be one of those columns that makes the writer faintly wish there wasn’t an internet. It would be one thing merely in print — ephemeral, swiftly forgotten, to be stumbled across only by like-minded individuals en route from Charles Moore to Taki — but online I fear there may be sniggering. ‘What

Is it ever appropriate to use the word ‘slut’? I always take my lead from the Prime Minister and he has assured the country that it is never appropriate or acceptable, so henceforth I shall desist from employing the term. If, one evening, I come home from work to find my wife, naked, cheerfully and

This has been a terrible year for horseflies. It’s bad enough if you’re human: often by the time you swat them off the damage has already been wrought by their revolting, cutting mandibles and it’s not till 24 hours later, I find, that the bite reaches peak unpleasantness, swelling into a huge itchy dome which