Lionel Shriver

Why I was almost thrown out of South Africa

28 May 2022 9:00 am

On my 2 p.m. arrival for a week-long work trip to South Africa a fortnight ago, an immigration agent flapped…

My list of Britain’s national character flaws

14 May 2022 9:00 am

Before we start, let’s firmly establish my long-standing affection for the United Kingdom. Why, some of my best friends are…

America has betrayed its young

30 April 2022 9:00 am

Two articles last weekend made me feel sorry for American young people. We in the anti-woke brigade can be awfully…

A question of bravery

16 April 2022 9:00 am

Joe Biden announced in November: ‘Transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know.’ When Conservative MP Jamie Wallis…

How to avoid heating your house

2 April 2022 9:00 am

Spring commonly augers a quickening warmth, but for Britons this year the season coincides with a chilling marker: a 54…

Why are so few Americans willing to defend their country?

19 March 2022 9:00 am

For many of us war voyeurs watching the news with a glass of sherry, admiration of the little-engine-that-could Ukrainian fighters…

The return of Actual Badness

5 March 2022 9:00 am

In the spring of 2020, I advanced an abnormally hopeful proposition: that one blessing that might arise from a pandemic…

What’s to become of Africa’s teeming youth?

19 February 2022 9:00 am

Demographers are attached to their theories. The field’s most enduring is the ‘demographic transition’, whereby modernisation inexorably lowers a society’s…

Our monetary bubble is about to burst

19 February 2022 9:00 am

OK, I finally watched Netflix’s Don’t Look Up. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it — especially before its effective subtitle for us…

Kamala Harris and the problem of affirmative action

5 February 2022 9:00 am

In lauding Joe Biden’s promise to fill the upcoming vacancy on the US Supreme Court with a black woman, last…

Joe Biden’s Civil War re-enactment

22 January 2022 9:00 am

We can’t blame American progressives for yearning to relive the civil rights movement. Those were heady days. Opposition to segregation…

The end is always nigh

8 January 2022 9:00 am

Typically for my generation, I woke repeatedly as a kid with my pyjamas soaked in sweat because I’d had yet…

The Covid dissidents who’ve made my Christmas merrier

18 December 2021 9:00 am

A few years back, a hackneyed journalistic come-hither led me to a sober reckoning: would I write about someone alive…

Will we ever learn to ‘live with the virus’?

4 December 2021 9:00 am

Comparing Saturday’s Downing Street press conference to Groundhog Day would insult one of my favourite films. The hilarious, multifarious strategies…

The absurd theatre of vaccine passports

20 November 2021 9:00 am

When a column highlighting under-appreciated breaking news has had absolutely no impact on the course of events (per usual), the…

A re-gift to Donald Trump

6 November 2021 9:00 am

For Democrats, like the ‘insurrection’ of January 6th, the Trump policy of separating illegal-immigrant parents from their children in 2018…

My advice to Dave Chappelle

23 October 2021 9:00 am

I’m accustomed to a sense of urgency in relation to Netflix offerings because the streaming service often buys short-term rights…

E-everything is heading your way

9 October 2021 9:00 am

Trends in New York City tend to foretell trends in London, whose fashions in turn set the pace for smaller…

The Covid pantomime at my father’s memorial

25 September 2021 9:00 am

This last weekend I attended the memorial service for my father, who died in July. This isn’t a bid for…

Is it time to defund the world’s policeman?

11 September 2021 9:00 am

It gets lost in the many creative purposes successive American administrations invented to justify remaining in Afghanistan, but the primary…

Would you want London to be overrun with Americans like me?

28 August 2021 9:00 am

The Afghans the Home Office is scrambling to resettle in Britain present one of immigration’s most sympathetic cases: translators and…

Why vaccine passports are pointless

14 August 2021 9:00 am

Despite having mocked app-happy Albion in my last column, I finally downloaded the NHS app. (Lest I seem a raging…

Am I alone in not wanting to download the Covid app?

31 July 2021 9:00 am

As I begin, I’m tortured by the doo-do-doo-do of The Twilight Zone’s theme music. I’ve hurtled back in time. Suddenly…

Immigration is Joe Biden’s Achilles heel

17 July 2021 9:00 am

Having indulged an unhealthy interest in human migration for decades, I’ve been intrigued by how the number of illegal immigrants…

The UK’s immigration figures are a fantasy

3 July 2021 9:00 am

Journalists filing to deadline are apt to dig only so deep when googling for statistics, which in themselves are sometimes…