Impressionism is 150 years old – this is the anniversary show to see
The time that elapsed between the fall of the Paris Commune and the opening of the first proper impressionist exhibition…
Can Starmer control 450 unruly MPs?
It doesn’t matter how loyal a candidate is. Once elected, all MPs (to a greater or lesser extent) conclude they…
Never admit that your band is prog – it’s the kiss of death
Sensible prog-rock bands try to ensure no one ever realises they play prog. What happens when you are deemed a…
Joe Biden is running out of time in the Middle East
Jerusalem The idea of a Saudi-Israel rapprochement would have been unthinkable not so long ago, and yet, shortly before the…
Compelling and somewhat heartbreaking: Girls State, on Apple TV+, reviewed
Here’s a fun thought experiment: instead of entrusting the future of American democracy to one of two old men, what…
Labour’s Gaza problem
The district of Pendle in Lancashire has a long history of dissenters, nonconformists, witches and murderers. Perhaps because it is…
Are conspiracy theories just conspiracy therapy?
At the Centre for Rare Diseases, the car park was full and lots of people were milling about. I pulled…
The ‘luxury beliefs’ that harm vulnerable children
Now that everyone insists that the oppressed must be lifted up – or platformed, if you’re that way inclined: why…
When is a Lord not a Lord?
The Financial Times seeks applicants for the Sir Samuel Brittan fellowship. Announcing this, the paper refers to him as Sir…
How many people sleep rough?
Ballot points Michael Gove hinted that the general election could be on 14 or 21 November. Have we had a…
The secret of success in Formula 1
For decades, competitive advantage depended on finding loopholes in the sport’s rule book – and no one knew that better than the British entrepreneur Bernie Ecclestone
Babies with Down’s syndrome have a right to be born
Many of us remember at least one morning in our childhoods when fate threw us some unexpected twist and we…
The rat as hero
After adopting two baby rats as pets, Joe Shute slowly overcomes his aversion and learns to appreciate the intelligence of creatures that are really quite like us
Teenagers are fuelling Sweden’s gun crisis
Stockholm There were 149 bomb attacks in Sweden last year. Though warring gangs are for the most part responsible, ordinary…
My prep school scarred me for life
‘A part of me died at school’, Charles Spencer writes in his shockingly stark account of sadism and sexual abuse at Maidwell Hall, Northamptonshire, in the 1970s
Even pilgrims are staying away from Jerusalem
Israel has a new train line: 25 minutes from Ben Gurion airport to Jerusalem. The Christian pilgrims would love it…
The quiet brilliance of street photographer Saul Leiter
This is the second exhibition of mid-century New York street photography at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. The first,…
The game’s up for ‘anti-racist’ racism
There are only a few rules to column-writing. One of the strictest is never to waste time bouncing off the…
You’ll want to claw your face off: Scoop reviewed
Scoop is a dramatised account of the events leading up to the BBC’s 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. The…
Stop worrying if your child is a picky eater
One parent in our class WhatsApp chat raised a pressing concern: her daughter was coming home every day with a…
Choreographers! Enough with the reworkings of Carmen and Frankenstein!
Carmen and Frankenstein are without a doubt two of the most over-worked tropes in our culture, the myths of the…
A.A. Milne and the torturous task of writing
For those of us lucky enough to have been regular contributors to Punch magazine, April is a slightly crueller month…
Dramatic, urgent and intriguing: BBC1’s This Town reviewed
After conquering the world with Peaky Blinders (and before that by co-creating Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), Steven Knight…
Am I having a heart attack?
Nairobi Some of our medical practitioners in Kenya advertise their services on street corners. ‘Bad omens, lost lovers, broken marriage,…
