Isis

I only got around to reading Michel Houellebecq’s Submission last month, a darkly amusing book about how France destabilises as it is caught between Islamic and nativist violence. It is, even by French standards, extremely pessimistic, but then who can blame them? When I visited France last summer, I noted just how many heavily armed police there were, even in the obscure western region we were staying at; more than I’d seen in any European country apart from Northern Ireland. The owner of the campsite, who was also a local official, explained that they were expecting something terrible to happen. Which it has done, twice now, this latter atrocity worse in

I always thought the Freuds a pretty sordid bunch, and after the latest revelations it seems I wasn’t far off. I first met Clement Freud when John Aspinall employed him as an adviser for food and wine. He was lugubrious and aggressive, and none of us punters liked him one bit. He was not a gambler but talked as if he were a big one. While crossing the Atlantic on board the QE2 back in 1974, he tried to pRlay the tough guy with me over — yes, you guessed it — a lady, but it didn’t work. But there’s no use giving him the business now that he’s dead,

Life is speeded up. It used to be that when a hideous atrocity occurred people waited a day or two, even a week, before co-opting it into their political armoury. Now it happens while the smell of cordite is still in the air and before the blood has dried. There is a breathtaking shamelessness about it and a certain narcissism, if not outright solipsism and an eagerness to demand a sort of acquired victim status. The revolting murders in an Orlando nightclub are a case in point. Some 49 people dead and 53 injured after a Muslim, presumably what we are enjoined to call a radical Muslim, ran amok with

Strolling around Tate Modern’s recent Alexander Calder exhibition, something bothered me. Calder is best known for creating mobile, rather than static, sculptures; most of his pieces were intended to move, but some were now sitting lifelessly by the gallery’s white walls. It’s hard to appreciate how radical Calder’s kinetic art was in its time. Hergé, who owned one of Calder’s sculptures, put it best: ‘I don’t know if you are familiar with his “mobiles”. They consist of elements of light metal, assembled by thin wires. When hung from the ceiling, the slightest draught will make them move. They are graceful, light and extraordinarily poetic.’ They sure are, or were. But here

‘We would fight them, slaughter them,’ Aadheen told me. ‘The moment we take a pill we would stop thinking about anything.’ The pill he’s referring to is Captagon, an amphetamine that’s said to fuel some of the brutality associated with Isis. In November last year, Turkish authorities seized 11 million Captagon pills on the Syrian border. In the same month, a Saudi prince was arrested after two tonnes of Captagon pills were found in cases being loaded onto a private jet. Aadheen is a former Isis member; he’s now a drug addict in hiding. We met late at night in a safe house arranged by his dealer, close to the Syrian border. Aadheen sat silently in the

The last time I bought a set of tyres in south London I came away not quite knowing whether I had just been asked to become a jihadi bride. Of course, it was only the merest suspicion. If I had had hard evidence I might have gone to the police. Or I might not. These days, one is likely to get done for a hate crime if one complains about a member of the opposite religion. If I had gone to the police what would I have said? ‘Excuse me, I’ve just had a set of tyres fitted to my Volvo by a man who tried to persuade me that

What do they mean, these Islamofascists, by using children in their publicity films? Last month one of their films featured a cute British kid of about six called Isa Dare: he looked on admiringly and then threatened the kaffir. Earlier this month a new film showed an English-speaking boy of about ten actually beheading a Syrian prisoner with a little knife. It wasn’t widely reported. (Has such stuff become routine, or has the quality press decided to refuse to mediate such messages?) Why the use of children? Does it make their regime seem scarier? Not really. Does it ensure such videos get maximum attention? Yes, but there’s more to it than

There are things that happen when you grow older — bad things, harbingers of death and decay. Past the age of 55, I mean. For example, a friend and fellow columnist confessed recently that upon rising from a sitting position he almost always unintentionally farts. A delicate little ‘glip!’ from his bottom, every time he stands up. I am a little older than him and have yet to experience this demeaning imposition, this additional whiff of misery as we trundle downhill, via the unctuous and grimly cheerful hospice attendants, to the crematorium. But I am so terrified of it happening that nowadays, when I stand up, I rise very slowly and

Home Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, prepared a paper on the four areas of concern between Britain and the European Union, as formulated by David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, for the EU to chew on at a summit in February. Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, said that to hold a referendum on the EU in June would be ‘disrespectful’ to elections being held in Scotland. Tony Blair, the former prime minister, said he thought Scotland would leave the Union if the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. Lord Parkinson, who as Cecil Parkinson was party chairman when the Conservatives won a