Columns

The world of make-believe is stranger than we realise

28 March 2020 9:00 am

Last summer, in the bc era, I took my then three-year-old to a new group play session: ‘Lottie’s Magic Box.’…

In this strange new world, where do we find purpose?

28 March 2020 9:00 am

Perhaps we are at least past the beginning of this crisis. The phase where the hunt for multipacks of loo-rolls…

Shakespeare knew a thing or two about self-isolation

28 March 2020 9:00 am

‘Now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.’ Shakespeare got there first, as ever, and…

There’s no sign of apocalypse in East Finchley – yet

14 March 2020 9:00 am

I was mansplaining to my wife earlier this week about why we ought to be very, very concerned by the…

Don’t tell me what I can read

14 March 2020 9:00 am

At least none of us will have to pretend that we read Woody Allen’s memoirs. This week the publishers Hachette…

Britain has its first punk-rock government

14 March 2020 9:00 am

The most surprising thing about the letter from Guardian and Observer journalists moaning about Suzanne Moore’s supposed ‘transphobia’ is that…

The test of the Budget

14 March 2020 9:00 am

British politics has not lost its flair for the dramatic. If it was not enough to have Sajid Javid resign…

An open letter to the friend who dropped me after Question Time

7 March 2020 9:00 am

I’ve put off sending a private email that’s been ready to go for weeks. Then last Sunday, I read Julie…

A guide to coronavirus hoarding

7 March 2020 9:00 am

We have now got past the absurd stage of glaring in a reproachful manner at Chinese people on the tube.…

The unbearable lightness of Boris Johnson

7 March 2020 9:00 am

Months ago, not long after Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election triumph, I wrote a Times column of a cautiously hopeful…

The Budget’s corona contagion

7 March 2020 9:00 am

When Sajid Javid resigned in a row with No. 10, there was much speculation about what would be in the…