What did Hamas think was going to happen?
Much misfortune the woebegone couldn’t have seen coming: a raging fire in the house next door that spreads to yours.…
Keep your politics à la carte
It’s a truism that the Anglosphere has developed a ‘tribalism’ that rivals the divisions between the Kikuyu and Luhya in…
I’m leaving Britain – and I feel guilty
I’m torn between headlining this column ‘Why I’m moving to Portugal’ and ‘Why I’m leaving the UK’. Exhausted, shadowed by…
Shoplifters need to feel shame
This is my brother’s story and, like many telling stories, it’s small. Tim lives in Iowa, as our mother’s family…
Children need protection from adult madness
The Texas Supreme Court just upheld a state law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors, to explosive consternation from predictable…
Therapy has turned on itself
Were I to overcome a lifelong scepticism about the healing powers of talk therapy, I imagine languishing on a psychiatrist’s…
How the West plays up to Putin’s caricature
In an outstanding article in the New York Times, Roger Cohen recounted his experience of travelling across Russia for a…
The problem with the Bibby Stockholm barge
For British taxpayers perturbed by their £6 million daily bill for housing asylum seekers in hotels, New York City mayor…
Heritable guilt is in vogue
I made a poor excuse for a Presbyterian even as a kid. I resented religious indoctrination every precious school-free Sunday.…
The unspeakable truth about housing
Earlier this year I was a panellist for Any Questions, and a young man in the audience asked what could…
The truth about ‘affirmative action’
I’ve never cared for the expression ‘affirmative action’, which puts a positive spin on a negative practice: naked, institutionalised racial…
The weather isn’t ‘climate change’
I was in New York while the smoke from Canadian wildfires filtered over the city for three days last week,…
The case against Ulez – by a cyclist
Whether you’re more afraid of the forces of order or the forces of chaos is generally a matter of disposition.…
The myths around immigration
After the media bigged up the expiration of America’s Covid-era Title 42, which enabled the US to block entries into…
I’m a sucker for Tucker Carlson
I was asked on Tucker Carlson Tonight only once, while in New York about two years ago, and I turned…
How to lose sales and alienate people
In some quarters, American enterprise is alive and well. Established in 1929 to promote consumer protection, the conservative non-profit Consumers’…
Why Democrats want Trump
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of an even more prominent fat man seems a big win for Donald Trump,…
The high price of low interest rates
You’ll recall that I’ve railed for years against zero interest rates, which transplanted a cancerous marrow into the very bones…
Despotic social controls cost lives
Look, I realise you don’t want to read this column. I’m unenthusiastic about writing it. For most of us, any…
My list of banned words
North America’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Language Project has released yet another list of Bad Say. Scientists are to swap…
The pervasive timorousness of publishing
After publishing 17 books, I’m no stranger to the publicity campaign. In my no-name days, my publicist would purr that…
The war against words
The University of Washington technology department has banned the word ‘housekeeping’. Not because the ‘problematic’ noun is overtly ist (ableist,…
Are we kidding ourselves over Ukraine?
Optimism can be surprisingly hilarious. In my last novel, two spouses agree to quit the planet once they’ve both turned…
Xi, Covid and seasonal schadenfreude
’Tis indeed the season to be jolly. Over the holidays, we can all put our feet up to view a…
