Protestors on the anti-Brexit marches have sensed an eerie absence. ‘What is it?’ I thought back in March as I stood on a soapbox to address an audience so jammed by the weight of numbers on Park Lane that it could not escape. Then it hit me. ‘What the hell have they done with the
I’ve just had new bookshelves put up in the hall, a whole wall-full of them, and for the first time in years, books that have been forgotten are finding a home. There are far more books than there is shelf space, so I’ve had to select which ones to display, and I’ve discovered a surprising
The mother of a little girl in my son’s year at school recently committed suicide. On the surface she was a radiant person, smiling and full of light. Devoted to her daughter, successful at work, always good for a laugh at the school gates. No one — save those loved ones who knew her private
The worse things are for the Tories, the better for Boris Johnson. If the Tories were ahead in the polls, he’d have little hope of becoming leader. MPs would choose someone more clubbable, less divisive, and more interested in them personally: who didn’t annoy so many of them so much. But Tory MPs are now
If you have heard of Alexander Nix, you probably think he’s a villain. He is the former head of Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics company that helped Donald Trump win the presidential election. Nix and his colleagues have been accused of all sorts of other dastardly deeds: conniving with the Kremlin to hack democracy, ‘dark
In the 1990s film The Usual Suspects, the detective character explains how to spot a murderer. You arrest three men for the same killing and put them in jail. The next morning, whoever’s sleeping is your killer. That’s because the nightmare of being on the run is over. It’s a relief to be caught. ‘You
Ew! Are you squeamish? Are you grossed out by meat, by fish, by eggs, by scales and suckers and shells and bones? We live in fastidious times. Now we pick, we prod, we send dietary requirements by return of post. ‘Super excited to see you guys! Btw I’m vegan, non-gluten, non-soy, no-nuts. Sorry to be
We are, of course, in the midst of an air pollution crisis which, like every other threat to our health these days, is ‘worse than smoking’. According to the Royal College of Physicians, everyone in Britain is effectively smoking at least one cigarette a day, rising to many more in the most polluted cities. What’s
It was Lionel Shriver who saw the writing on the wall. Giving a keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival three years ago in which she decried the scourge of modern identity politics, Shriver observed that the dogma of ‘cultural appropriation’ —which demands no less than complete racial segregation in the arts — had not
‘Beep!’ This is one of the most maddening computer games I’ve ever played. I’m tracking a flock of birds, and when I hit the right one, it explodes with a satisfying ‘phutt’. But as I get better at spotting them, the birds scatter ever more wildly across the screen, and I hear that unforgiving ‘beep’:
Britain’s hunting estates were once beautiful. Walking through the New Forest, we can all appreciate how the purchase of land for hunting can radically protect our countryside. Almost a thousand years after William the Conqueror set aside this wooded wonderland, we can still enjoy its aged oak pastures, Britain’s largest herds of free-roaming grazing animals,
‘I grew up in LA where we all thought fame was a joke,’ says Bret Easton Ellis. ‘My class was filled with people from Laura Dern to the girls in Little House on the Prairie. And it always seemed a bit of a joke. I never really imagined that was on the cards for me.
As any parent of young children will tell you, toddler groups exist as much for the adults as for the kids, and my local meet-up is no exception. We knock back coffee and compete to see who has had the least sleep while the children run riot on trikes. The small talk always winds its
Have you noticed how nearly everyone in the media has won an award? Is there even such a thing as a documentary maker who isn’t ‘award-winning’? Most journalists my age have picked up some sort of bauble. I sulked about this for years until a colleague reminded me that I did have an award: Private
Los Angeles has its shortcomings. Some are shared with almost all big cities (traffic, more traffic), while others are unique to this weird desert city (rattlesnakes on hiking trails, winters that are too sunny and warm). But despite its shortcomings, LA is also the place where the sublime can easily and surprisingly wrap itself in
I have been a defence lawyer for more than 25 years. I have defended clients charged with almost every crime there is. I have argued against convictions for robbery, rape, sexual assault, murder, manslaughter, copyright theft, perverting the course of justice, perjury, serious fraud, international illegal fishing, money laundering, causing death by dangerous driving, grievous
The news over Easter that Lord Adonis, the counterweight to nominative determinism, was standing as a Labour Remain MEP was greeted with a fair degree of scepticism. Many commented that it would be a novelty for him to stand for anything — in his early twenties he became an SDP councillor in Oxford, but that’s
Something’s been missing from Westminster these past few days. Normally, in an election week, there is a buzz about the place. Politicians feast off their encounters with the voters, coming back from the campaign trail with new theories about what the public really want. But this time, few MPs from any party seem keen to
Lesbian tourism has long been a thing — women who once kissed a girl trying to appear more interesting while living a heterosexual life. Anne Heche, Madonna, Britney Spears and Ariana Grande have used lesbian/bisexual hints to titillate fans and sell more records. But nothing riles me like the Miley Cyrus approach which is to
For those of us who grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, there is a pungent but negative sense of time travel around New IRA statements. The New IRA spokesman is a ‘T. O’Neill’ — which, you might notice, is just a consonant and some bad blood away from the old Provisional IRA spokesman