A thriving City will test Labour’s tolerance
The City is having a busier year than pessimistic observers – including me – might have expected. The biggest deal…
How a TikTok dance craze turned into a brainwashing cult
Because you don’t – I hope – use TikTok you will never have heard of the Wilking sisters. But back…
Eddie Izzard’s one-man Hamlet deserves top marks
Every Hamlet is a failure. It always feels that way because playgoers tend to compare what they’re seeing with a…
No one knows how to sell the European project to the Irish any more
A few days after having Sunday lunch at the hotel where Michael Collins ate his last meal, we found ourselves…
The EU ‘elections’ vindicate Brexit
If Britain had not left the European Union, we would be going to the polls this week as well as…
Shiny, raunchy, heartless spectacular: Platée, at Garsington, reviewed
Fast times on Mount Olympus. Jupiter has been shagging around again and now his wife Juno has bailed on their…
What war graves teach us about peace
Hugh Jones was 29 when he was killed in action. On Wednesday, the eve of the 80th anniversary of D-Day,…
A Native American tragedy: Wandering Stars, by Tommy Orange, reviewed
Shocked to find that his Cheyenne forebears had been imprisoned in Florida, Orange was inspired to write a story of displacement and abuse spanning generations
The ordeal of sitting for my father Lucian Freud
Rose Boyt describes posing naked over many nights – supplied with purple hearts by Freud to keep her awake – and her shock on finally seeing the result
Why must we be in constant battle with the ocean?
As we continue to fill the depths with plastic and radioactive waste, our coastlines are increasingly battered by tsunamis and erosion
‘A group of deranged idiots’ – how the Soviets saw the Avant-Gardists
First welcomed, then vilified, by Lenin, Russian artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Kandinsky and Chagall would find their only real supporters in the West
Second life: Playboy, by Constance Debré, reviewed
Having abandoned her marriage and her career as a lawyer, Debré re-emerges as a lesbian, a writer, and a seducer equal to Casanova
Bayes’s Theorem: the mathematical formula that ‘explains the world’
An obscure 18th-century Presbyterian minister’s insights into statistics are still valued today in making strategic economic decisions and forecasts
Under the Taliban, Afghan light entertainment accrued unusual weight
For a television talent show, Afghan Star had unusually high stakes. When it first hit Afghanistan’s screens in 2005, four…
Did the Duchess of Windsor fake the theft of her own jewels?
When Wallis’s jewellery collection disappeared from under the bed one night in Surrey in 1946, was this a misfortune, or carelessness, or planned fraud?
Breathtaking: Mary Cassatt at Work, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reviewed
Work – in the sense of toil – is about the last thing a 19th-century painter wished to be associated…
When Stalin was the lesser of two evils
Churchill detested Stalin, but Britain and the US needed his help against an even worse enemy. Giles Milton reveals the true nature of the Big Three’s dysfunctional relationship
Minor Linklater but fun: Hit Man reviewed
Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is a minor Linklater but a minor Linklater is still an event. Also, after all those…
Haunted by the past: Winterberg’s Last Journey, by Jaroslav Rudis, reviewed
A garrulous nonagenarian and his patient carer make a long train trip to Sarajevo, hoping to solve a decades-old murder mystery
Why am I so unlucky in love?
One of my exes is trying to get me arrested. I discovered this when I received an email from the…
The craft renaissance
As long ago as the 1960s, the poet Edward James was worried that traditional crafts were dying out. Having frittered…
