From the US elections in November, the American left will be largely absent. Americans voters will choose between the forces of moderate conservatism, headed by President Barack Obama, and the forces of radicalism, led by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Obama and most of his fellow Democrats are conservatives in two senses. To begin with,
It is widely agreed that 9/11 had a silver lining: that frightening day prodded us into thinking about religion, into taking it seriously. It nudged us away from our embarrassed evasion and forced us to admit that religion is a huge cultural and political force, even in Britain. It helped to bury the myth that
When the Criminal Records Bureau says you’re a violent criminal, it’s not easy to put the record straight. Recently, I decided to volunteer with The Samaritans. It won’t surprise you to hear I found out a good deal about myself in the process. What might surprise you is that what I found out was that
The news, when it emerged this summer, had an air of inevitability: women for the first time are scoring higher on IQ tests than men. Girls have long been doing better than boys in GCSEs and today they make up the majority of university students. When they graduate, they’re more likely than men to find
The news, when it emerged this summer, had an air of inevitability: women for the first time are scoring higher on IQ tests than men. Girls have long been doing better than boys in GCSEs and today they make up the majority of university students. When they graduate, they’re more likely than men to find
I’d go to Canada if I wanted to ski, or fish, or see the Northern Lights, but in the end it was only to launch my (Canadian) boyfriend D.W.’s book that I ventured west. I hate to think of myself as prejudiced, but even lyrical books like Will Fiennes’s The Snow Geese don’t do much
Like Nostradamus, the vision is flickering but I believe I have glimpsed the future — at least, the future look of garden and landscape design. I wonder whether, in these dark times, we are at the threshold of a new enlightened age. There were two great moments in the history of garden and landscape design:
When was the last time a piece of technology made you happy? Truly happy, so satisfied with the experience that you immediately wanted to repeat it? For me it was last weekend, in a pub toilet, using an Excel Xlerator hand dryer. This unbelievably powerful bit of equipment sorted out my mitts in less time
On a visit to my old school not long ago, I found myself confronted by my former PE teacher, now the deputy head. She fixed me with an icy glare. ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘I’ve forgotten my note.’ The icy glare froze completely so I explained: ‘You remember? I’m the one who came to every
When the International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up ten years ago, it was meant to make the world a safer place. The Court and the various UN war crimes tribunals were supposed to pursue and punish war-criminal dictators as a warning to all the others. The idea may have been a noble one but,
Two hundred years ago, the creepy Revd Thomas Malthus would take to his pulpit to rail against the copulating lower orders. Author of An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), Malthus was one of the first promoters of the overpopulation thesis. If people — especially poor people — didn’t stop having so many babies,
Twenty-five years ago, in a windowless Levantine oubliette, my wrist and ankle were bound with chains, but my imagination soared. Among my many daydreams was a reunion a quarter-century hence. The guests at this illusory affair were to have been my captors. There were times when I envisaged our encounter as real, and others as
Britain has been at war in Afghanistan for over a decade. Many Britons now take it for granted that its country’s intervention in Afghanistan has failed and when Nato troops pull out in 2014 they will leave behind a volatile and unsettled state that could easily plunge into a civil war — much worse than
Earlier this year the Education Secretary Michael Gove suggested that primary school children ought to learn a poem by heart. Even if the teaching unions had not objected I would have needed no further convincing. I was converted to Gove’s idea years ago, by Terry Waite. Having haphazardly discovered poetry on my own at state
It started in America. The Midwest has for weeks been suffering what is now the worst drought in living memory. Prices for maize and wheat have soared by 50 per cent and the G20 will next week decide whether to call an emergency meeting to discuss what the United Nations believes could be a repeat
In the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, there’s a picture that, last time I looked, was curtained off. A couple of Japanese girls came out from behind the curtain, stuffing their hands into their mouths to stop the giggles. I went in to see the cause of the girly mirth and there it was, Gustave Courbet’s
Acid is back. For the first time since the 1960s there are signs of a rekindling of serious interest in psychedelic drugs — conferences, clinical tests, and a full-blown study is planned, with human subjects. LSD belonged to history — to grizzly-haired hippies and travellers, the ‘counter culture’. Now, an informal alliance of psychiatrists, therapists
Anybody hunting for Britain’s lost summer need look no further than Iceland. I spent last week there salmon-fishing, in torrid sunburn conditions caused by a northward shift of the Atlantic jetstream which means that the place has scarcely seen rain since spring, and not many salmon. I failed to hook a single fish, which caused
The prominent story of London 2012 has been that of a country which was once an underachiever in the Olympic games but which, through sheer hard work on the part of its athletes, has hauled itself to the top of the medals tables, producing in the process one of the most dramatic world records in
Britishness was supposed to be finished, its last flickering embers to be snuffed out by Alex Salmond when he holds his 2014 referendum on breaking up the Union. The London Olympics, the Nationalists claimed, would be the last at which the Scots, English, Welsh and Northern Irish would be teammates. The Scots, supposedly on the