Features
No tips please, we’re British
I hate tipping, not because I am intrinsically mean but because of the anxiety it induces. You pitch up at…
Ahmad Massoud: ‘I’m 100% sure I can topple the Taliban’
It’s fighting season in Afghanistan again. When the Americans were in charge, after the poppy fields had been harvested in…
The power of restorative justice
In a week when the Chief Inspector of Prisons published an Urgent Notification detailing the horrors of HMP Wandsworth, I…
Tom Cruise and the art of falconry
Last week, the Hollywood team making the latest Mission Impossible film was desperate to clear Trafalgar Square of its superabundant…
How universities raised a generation of activists
It was only a matter of time before America’s student protests spread to the UK. In Oxford, tents have been…
Bugs, biscuits, trench foot: from the front line of the uni protests
On the grass in front of UCL’s main building, on Sunday night, there were about 30 tents and the portico…
The Israeli-Hamas negotiations are fraught with complexity
Jerusalem For weeks the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had been preparing for an assault on Rafah. Yet when the order…
Why do people make excuses for surly staff?
‘You grab that table, I’ll get the drinks.’ I did as bid. A couple of minutes later, Paul was back,…
Georgia is on the brink of revolution
For weeks, the Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi has looked like a battlefield. Thousands of protestors, mostly in their twenties, have…
What Xi wants in Europe
On a quiet street in Belgrade, a bronze statue of Confucius stands in front of a perforated white block, the…
Sex and the shires: Plum Sykes reveals all
‘I looked at a picture of him today and thought: “Why are you wearing those expensive clothes, you twit?”’ Plum…
Why Trumpists think the real conspiracy is RFK Jr
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Winston Churchill’s description of Soviet Russia in 1939 could also apply…
Survival plan: is Rishi ready for the rebels?
Ever since Rishi Sunak became leader of the Conservative party, he has been preparing for this week. Entering 10 Downing…
Paris, city of blight
You know that feeling when you haven’t seen someone for several years and when you do, you really notice the…
Meet Hillingdon Man, Britain’s unhappiest chap
It’s official. I live in the unhappiest place in Britain. Who says so? My neighbours here in Hillingdon, that’s who.…
Wales is facing a US-style opioid crisis
In Europe at the end of the Noughties, the problem drug was krokodil. The semi-synthetic, necrosis-causing alternative to heroin was…
In praise of the 1/3 pint
The worst thing that happened to me over the pandemic was I got ‘really into beer’. I was already into…
Joseph Stiglitz: ‘We know where fascism led last time’
When Joseph Stiglitz talks, the left listens. The Nobel laureate has advised multiple Democratic presidents and the World Bank, where…
The government’s pathetic response to the Now Teach scandal
One Saturday last July, a couple of hundred people gathered in a conference centre on the bank of the Thames…
Why were Germany’s Covid files redacted?
There are two kinds of long Covid. One is a medical syndrome, the other manifests as a healthy obsession –…
How the Jilly Cooper Book Club turned toxic
The Jilly Cooper Book Club was set up about a decade ago by two friends who’d had enough of book…
Has the C of E got its reparations bill all wrong?
Reparations have a troubled history, and rightly. The word itself, in its familiar sense, seems to have been a euphemism…
The Xi files: how China spies
Most states spy. In principle there’s nothing to stop them. But China’s demand for intelligence on the rest of the…
Daniel Dennett’s last interview: ‘AI could signal the end of human civilisation’
Do we still need philosophers? Daniel Dennett, who died last week, believed strongly that we do. ‘Scientists have a tendency…
Hyper-history: why did politics go crazy?
On the day Theresa May signed her Brexit withdrawal agreement with Brussels, Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, resigned. She tried…
