Features

Damian Thompson

Has the Vatican abandoned beauty?

The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the Cambridge-shire market town of Ely is one of the supreme achievements of European Gothic architecture. Its octagonal tower lifts the eye to a sumptuously restored wooden lantern from which Christ looks down in majesty. Who on Earth thinks faith can be awakened by seeing

Watch out Wimbledon: padel is taking over

For the past 15 years, I’ve had an entirely healthy compulsion – my wife, I suspect, would disagree – to play tennis at least twice a week. I assumed this habit was so ingrained that nothing short of a calamitous injury could ever keep me from my fix. Spain is where the craze took hold.

The fine art of French rioting

Marseille One of the benefits of holidaying during a riot is you feel remarkably safe. Ruffians have no interest in you while they can be having fun at the expense of a much more exciting foe, the police. And besides, there are Lacoste stores to be raided: they have no time for your wallet. The other

Life with Low Life: my happy years with Jeremy Clarke

‘Am I gonna die today, Treen?’ I kissed his cheek. ‘Darling, your oxygen, blood pressure and pulse are fine and you’re a good colour. Since you woke up you’ve had a poached egg on toast, plain Greek yoghurt with berries, granola and maple syrup, a Snickers bar, a piece of fruit cake, a baked fresh

Why Putin still needs Wagner

It will be a matter of deep regret for Vladimir Putin that, in the wake of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s ill-fated attempt to overthrow Russia’s military establishment, he has finally been forced to come clean about the Kremlin’s association with the Wagner Group. Deniability is a vital facet for a veteran spook like Putin. Even when Wagner’s

How my brother-in-law Boris got me cancelled

Nigel Farage and I don’t have too much in common beyond liking a pint and a cigar. Yet I now discover a link: we are both PEPs, or ‘politically exposed persons’. Such a handle may not be a total surprise to Nigel. (He may not have been surprised, either, when Coutts said that it had

Ian Williams

The secret life of China’s Banksy

The crypt of St John’s Waterloo feels serene and secure, a world away from the bustling city above. ‘I will spend the day here, because I feel safe here,’ Badiucao tells me. The dissident political cartoonist, who has been called ‘China’s Banksy’, is preparing to display his work on the crypt’s newly restored brick walls

Is the glucose monitoring craze really so healthy?

At £300 a go, the Zoe is a reassuringly expensive accessory. It has a recognisable logo and even had a 200,000-strong waiting list at one point. That wouldn’t be so unusual if Zoe was a must-have handbag or jewellery, but it is  a continuous glucose monitor that you stick to your arm. Some charities ask

What really happened between Putin and Prigozhin?

In the absence of facts, it’s hard to understand what got into Yevgeny Prigozhin. I spoke to the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky about Prigozhin and Putin and their odd relationship. He says that criminality unites and explains the pair. Prigozhin went to prison for almost ten years, for robbery. The legend is that he opened the

The Wagner Group isn’t Russia’s only private army

Allowing a psychopath to form a private army of violent criminals may not, on reflection, have been Vladimir Putin’s greatest idea. But Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutinous Wagner Group is by no means the only private army operating in Russia. Over the past couple of months no fewer than five armies have been fighting on Russian soil.

The lewdness and lyricism of ancient Roman graffiti

Throw him to the lions! That’s what I thought when I saw the video of a grinning moron desecrating the walls of the Colosseum with the words ‘Ivan + Hayley 23’. He must have been referring to his girlfriend, standing by his side – and the year. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d defaced

The march of Europe’s right-wing women

The British Conservative party may be hopelessly behind in the polls, yet all over Europe the right is surging ahead. Everywhere you look, the left is losing – in Italy, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Hungary and now, following an election victory for the New Democracy party on Sunday, Greece. In France, the Rassemblement National (the

Home truths: the crushing reality of the mortgage crisis

In December Jeremy Hunt hosted a mortgage summit, attended by lenders and the Financial Conduct Authority, to discuss rate woes. At the time, the numbers were at least moving in the right direction. During Liz Truss’s 49-day premiership, the FCA expected interest rates to rise to 5.5 per cent, an increase which was forecast to

Imran Khan: The conspiracy against me

Pakistan is familiar with political unrest. No prime minister in its independent history has completed a full term in power; some of its most popular leaders have been assassinated or executed. Even so, the events of last month were extraordinary. On 9 May, in response to the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan on