The tumultuous story behind Caravaggio’s last painting
For centuries no one knew who it was by or even what it was of. The picture that had hung…
City folk go wild for wild garlic
For a certain type of Barbour-clad middle-aged man, the best time of year is late summer, and the arrival of…
Why has the National engaged in this tedious act of defamation of the Brontës?
The Divine Mrs S is a backstage satire set in the year 1800, when flouncy costumes and elaborate English prose…
What we owe to the self-taught genius Carl Linnaeus
Bumptious, uncouth and the despair of his schoolmasters, Linnaeus died almost forgotten. Yet he established a system of taxonomy that we still use two centuries later
Mt Warning: reopen awe and wonder to all Australians
Mount Warning is widely regarded as the most ecologically beautiful National Park in NSW. Most of the nearby towns (like…
Brazil’s bureaucrats bully Twitter
Brazil is on the brink of banning Twitter, with its bureaucrats accusing Elon Musk of breaking Brazilian law. The order…
Post-Soviet hostels and loveless nights
I suppose there are people who stay in four or five-star hotels all their lives and become a kind of…
Rayner promises to quit if convicted
Angela Rayner has this evening announced that she would quit if convicted of breaking electoral law, saying: ‘If I committed…
Rishi Sunak loses another minister
Graham Stuart has this afternoon quit the government, saying he wishes to focus on local issues after service in various…
The Greens are embarrassing the SNP
For an image of the ‘progressive nationalism’ that has disfigured Scottish public life over the past decade, look no further…
The Bank of England can’t blame IT for its dodgy forecasts
It hires the cleverest young graduates every year. It brings in talent from around the world. And it has the…
Are we really reaching ‘farmaggedon’?
I happened to be walking in the Cambridgeshire fens this morning while listening to the latest instalment of ‘farmageddon’ –…
Never forget the politicians who pushed gender politics
The great trans hoax is coming to an end. The idea of thousands of people being ‘trapped’ in the wrong…
