What Ed Miliband got right on Syria
It’s not every day I spring to the defence of Ed Miliband, Secretary for Environment, Net Zero and all the…
The Lion’s Mane, the Firework and terrible jellyfish jokes: the year’s best children’s books
Contemporary authors, including Rick Riordan, Kate di Camillo, Mark Forsyth and Michael Stavaric, share shelf space with welcome reprints, including the ever-terrifying Struwwelpeter
Assisted dying won’t work
Well, the pro-choicers have got their way. In two years’ time, if Kim Leadbeater’s reassurances hold good, we’ll have the…
The Taoiseach will get more than he bargained for in Ireland’s snap election
The Irish general election happens on Friday. In times past, observers would be marking the rise of Sinn Fein; now…
Stimulating little exhibition: Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites reviewed
Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites… there’s an obvious problem here: how do you represent one sense by another?…
The Wizard of Oz sequel that’s perfect for our gender-obsessed age
To not wholly rapturous reviews, the movie Wicked, the prequel to The Wizard of Oz, is released this week. Tragically,…
The great flaw in Labour’s assisted dying bill
Believe it or not, the most compelling argument against assisted dying today came from Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem…
Make pirates scary again
If there’s one thing to bring out your inner Herod, it’s the twee tendency in younger children’s books. It’s at…
The slippery slope of assisted dying
Critics of the Assisted Dying Bill have been warning for a while that it would lead to a ‘slippery slope’.…
The Christian view of sex contains multitudes
Lower Than the Angels (that is the condition of man, according to the psalmist and St Paul) is a book…
Dawn Butler’s bonkers black history poem
Oh. My. Lord. I’ve been looking at Dawn Butler’s spoken verse as presented by her on X and it’s difficult…
The sham of an assisted dying ‘citizen’s jury’
It is remarkable that the BBC decided to give the latest PR exercise in favour of assisted suicide a big…
Keep fun out of funerals
There are two untraditional ways to take your leave of this world in Britain. The bleaker is the ‘direct cremation’…
The desecration of Canterbury cathedral
According to canon 1220 of the Catholic church’s code of canon law, ‘all those responsible are to take care that…
A tribute to Ismail Kadare, a writer who really deserved a Nobel Prize
Apart from Bob Dylan and Kazuo Ishiguro, it’s a fair bet that most people’s reaction to the Nobel prizewinners for…
What’s wrong with calling a female walker ‘sweetheart’?
So, another place where men have to mind their language: on mountains. In an article in Scottish Mountaineer magazine by one…
Scotland’s religious collapse
Last week, I had a drink with a Catholic priest friend who works with young people in custody. Inevitably, our…
Woman’s Hour has a diversity problem
On the bright side, Nuala McGovern isn’t Emma Barnett, she of the combative approach to broadcasting. The new presenter of Woman’s…
‘No mow May’ isn’t long enough
There’s one way of getting the look of the Chelsea Flower show winner, Ula Maria’s forest bathing garden, and that’s…
Why Gillian Keegan is right to scrap the free school cap
The other day a nice Albanian builder came round. He was in an upbeat mood because his son had been…
Why the public doesn’t support decriminalising abortion
Curious, isn’t it, how sentiment changes on a critical issue all of a sudden? Not so long ago, the prospect…
Irish voters have refused to erase the family
It’s not been a particularly good weekend for the political establishment in Ireland. Two constitutional changes have been rejected by…
Menopausal women shouldn’t be treated differently
Granted, I could be a beneficiary of the latest guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) about women…
How to get through Lent
Well, it’s a pig of a coincidence to have Ash Wednesday coinciding with Valentine’s Day. So, at the start of…
