Starmer, Burnham and the narcissism of small differences
Andy Burnham’s bid to stand as an MP – and Keir Starmer’s decision to block him from doing just that,…
The depressed duck detective is back
Grade: B– It’s a duck, except he’s a detective. Or a detective, except he’s a duck. Anyway he wears a…
Is there method in Donald Trump’s madness?
I am, as often, lost in admiration for my colleague Freddy Gray. Whenever Donald Trump does something that looks, on…
Who cares if Dylan Thomas was a plagiarist?
‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.’ This quote from TS Eliot has become a critical commonplace. And if we’re to take it as…
The outstanding beigeness of Keir Starmer
”I’ll be PM this time next year,’ Starmer tells BBC.’’ Such was the headline on the BBC’s website over the…
Spotify wouldn’t exist without the musicians it exploits
It used to be said that you could walk from the west of Ireland to Nantucket on the backs of…
What binds the celebrities featured in the Epstein files
The new naughty list just dropped, as the kids say these days. The pre-Christmas release of the Epstein files, or…
Why was this old man fined £250 for spitting out a leaf?
‘I celebrate myself, and sing myself,’ wrote Walt Whitman in his rhapsodic celebration of freedom, Leaves of Grass. ‘And what I…
I’m a fan of the BBC – but even I’m struggling to defend it
Another Director-General bites the dust. And the number two with him. What a facepalm. What a honking, stupid, first-day-in-the office sort of error to…
Welcome to the age of the troll
We’re accustomed, by now, to Catholic priests having eccentric hobbies. Even so, 57-year-old Father Mark Rowles turned out to have a humdinger.…
Why the Children’s Booker Prize is a great idea
The Booker Foundation announced on Friday what it called its most ambitious project in twenty years: the launch of a Children’s Booker…
Why I love blowing up worms
Grade: B+ War, as we all know, is hell. But if it involves small squeaky annelids blowing each-other up with…
Prince Andrew: from playboy to PlayStation
Oh God, not that. That’s all we need, I thought, reading in a long account of Prince Andrew’s current travails…
In defence of the rules-based order
The last time I saw my cousin, the former Tory MP Danny Kruger, I found myself trying to ginger him up…
The joy of university
I log in so infrequently these days that Facebook has, I’m pleased to say, nearly given up on me. Like a half-hearted stalker whose…
We’re all doomed if English literature students can’t read books
The question has changed, as one Oxford don noted wanly on social media, from ‘What are you reading at university?’ to ‘Are…
America, where did it go wrong?
Say what you like about Donald Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, but his ‘flooding the zone’ thing really works, doesn’t…
Was Charlie Kirk’s murder the senseless act of an internet troll?
We are in the grip of old habits. We assume, most of us, that when a prominent political figure is…
Who cares if there’s a blunder in Ian McEwan’s latest book?
Ian McEwan’s new novel What We Can Know isn’t even out yet, and already someone has spotted a goof. In…
Why shouldn’t adults play with toys like Lego?
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child:…
Angela Rayner’s not-so-scandalous ‘third home’
Angela Rayner, it’s reported, has bought a ‘third home’. The three-bedroom seaside flat on the south coast that she has…
Pacy, fast-moving and graphically lavish: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 reviewed
Grade: B+ Tony Hawk is an old guy these days. The most famous sk8r boi ever to have lived is…
Why Middlemarch is ‘the perfect beach read’
At the time of writing, I am not more than a few hours away from leaving this dismal hell-hole and…
Superman has always been ‘woke’
The moment I heard that there’d been a backlash against James Gunn’s reboot of the Superman franchise on the grounds…
