Features

Fellowship of the Lamb: how we’re saving Tolkien’s pub

I’ve just bought Tolkien’s pub in Oxford. Well, to be more precise, I and more than 300 fellow drinkers have bought the Lamb and Flag, the 400-year-old Oxford pub where the Inklings group of writers – including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis – drank. Like so many pubs across the country, the Lamb and Flag

Open alms: how I came to live on charity

A year ago, I moved into what I hope will be my home for the rest of my life. I became an almshouse resident. The announcement of my implied reduced circumstances provoked some interesting responses: from family, joy that my recent hard times were over; from acquaintances, a range of reactions: embarrassment, shocked disbelief, scepticism.

Kate Andrews

What crisis? A tough week for Trussonomics

What’s the sign of a successful Budget? Chris Philp, the new chief secretary to the Treasury, gave his answer moments after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s statement last Friday: a strong pound. ‘Great to see sterling strengthening on the back of the new UK growth plan,’ he tweeted out. A (temporary) rising pound made sense to Truss

Sam Leith

What does it mean when Giorgia Meloni quotes G.K. Chesterton?

For a UK audience, the most striking moment in the new Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s victory speech will have been that she anchored its peroration to a quote from G.K. Chesterton. ‘Chesterton wrote, more than a century ago,’ she said, ‘“Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be

Jenny McCartney

There’s a growing sense that tomorrow belongs to Sinn Fein

Where can Ulster Unionism go now? If it were a person, it would be someone in the grip of a long depression, whose occasional bursts of anger mask the fact that they so often feel despondent and betrayed. The widespread reaction to the latest Northern Ireland census, in which Catholics narrowly outnumber Protestants for the

The ups and downs of driving a Tesla

I began the week in Miami, looking forward to what a friend of mine describes as ‘the finest sight in all Florida – the departure lounge’. That is a little unfair; a tour of Cape Canaveral is mind-blowing. But beyond that I confess I find the state brash and gaudy, a fitting place for Donald

Katy Balls

‘We’re so close’: there’s a cautious optimism at Labour conference

When Liz Truss scheduled her mini-Budget for the Friday before Labour conference, there was concern in Keir Starmer’s office. After months of meticulous planning, Starmer’s team feared the new Tory government would use their event to upstage his and distract from the party’s annual gathering in Liverpool. They were right to think that Kwasi Kwarteng’s

Wes Streeting: we need the private sector to help reform the NHS

When Labour MPs gossip about who could be their next leader, Wes Streeting’s name invariably comes up. Like Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, Labour’s shadow health secretary spends half his time insisting he’s not running for the top job. Also like Rayner, he’s never actually stood for it – yet. But there have been

The Energy Price Guarantee may cost much less than is feared

Critics of ‘Trussonomics’ – and there are many – have been quick to claim that the new energy price plan puts its economic credibility at risk. Indeed, early estimates suggested that the ‘Energy Price Guarantee’ could cost the taxpayer £150 billion or more over two years, making it the most expensive economic policy in history.

The sad demise of the church pew

Imagine a child’s drawing of the interior of a traditional English church and the elements the picture is likely to contain. There will be colourful stained-glass windows, an altar and, almost certainly, rows of sturdy wooden pews. Yet the sad truth is that in parish after parish, the pews – which are often centuries old

Brace yourself for a coup in Brazil

‘Jail, death or victory.’ These are the three alternatives Brazil’s incumbent leader says await him. It is an unusual rallying call for an election campaign, but this is Jair Bolsonaro, the ‘Trump of the Tropics’, and he may well be right. Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 when his initial rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,

Sam Leith

Charles III will reign in an age where feeling trumps duty

Charles III’s first address to the nation as King began by speaking of sorrow – and went on to speak of love. He used ‘love’ or its cognates eight times in that short speech. He spoke of his ‘darling Mama’ and ‘dear late Papa’, of love for Harry and Meghan, love for his people and

Elizabeth II’s devotion to the Commonwealth

It’s a question which would inevitably surface during any serious discussion of Queen Elizabeth II: who was her favourite prime minister? Unlike her grandfather, George V, who was clear that he favoured Ramsay MacDonald (and told him so), or George VI, for whom Winston Churchill was the clear winner, Elizabeth II always kept us guessing.

More mad than Vlad: Russia’s ultra-nationalist threat

‘Russia without Putin!’ was the cry of Muscovites who turned out to protest against Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency for a third term in December 2011. Crowds 100,000 strong chanted their opposition on Moscow’s Academician Sakharov Prospect – as symbolically named a venue as you could wish for – as riot police stood calmly