Features
What is Putin’s endgame in Syria?
Familiar, depressing images emerge from Ghouta in Syria: rows of tiny white shrouds, children killed in relentless airstrikes, makeshift hospitals,…
Blue pill-pushers: Why is Viagra being marketed to young men?
In September last year, official figures showed a startling rise in the number of young British men turning up at…
Italians aren’t fascists. They’re angry about immigration
Ravenna Amid relentless propaganda about Italy being in the grip of fascism, Italians go to the polls on Sunday. It…
Why Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Carroll and the Romans loved Otmoor
‘Don’t sit down too long my duck, you might be doing nothing,’ reads the inscription memorialising Barbara Joan Austin (4…
Angela Merkel has created Germany’s far-right
Bankruptcy, wrote Ernest Hemingway, happens in two ways — ‘gradually and then suddenly’. By now, Angela Merkel will be beginning…
Meet ‘AKK’, Angela Merkel’s anointed successor
On Monday, Angela Merkel did something quite extraordinary. As speculation about her party’s leadership mounted, she named an apparent successor:…
Wham bam, thank you Ma’am
I love Americans’ kindness, generosity and energy but am often thrown by their exaggerated politeness and euphemistic speech. They use…
The NHS’s internal market is an expensive catastrophe
The NHS is in dire straits. I never thought I’d say this but as a doctor, and having seen the…
Oxfam’s troubles began when it became politically correct
In the early 1980s when I was a schoolboy, my father, Brian Hartley, worked for Oxfam during a famine in…
Never mind Russia – the real threat to the US is China
One of the most memorable moments of the 2012 presidential debates came when the candidates were asked what they believed…
South Africa Notebook: After Zuma’s fall, and life on the Little Karoo
In recent years, living in South Africa has been a bit like having cancer. The malaise eating us from within…
Majestic Vienna makes a point of selling the right kind of celebrity
Two things always strike me when I visit Vienna. The first is how easterly the city lies. This was more…
Does aid do more harm than good?
What a scandal for our times. Oxfam, that upholder of modern-day virtue, unassailable in its righteousness, buried for seven years…
Why we keep ignoring NGO sex scandals
One of the oddest things about the Oxfam sex scandal is how little we all seem to care. Even now,…
Homer’s Trojan War epic richly deserves its lavish new BBC adaptation
Did the Trojan War really take place? The Foreign Secretary certainly thinks so. ‘The Iliad must have happened,’ Boris Johnson…
In defence of Christopher Steele
There are two Trump-Russia ‘conspiracies’. In one, the US President is bought or blackmailed by the Kremlin. In the other,…
My Sri Lankan stroke: how a book festival turned into a horror story
This time last year, it seemed that life couldn’t get much better for me: I had a new book out…
Stop and search is our best weapon in the fight against crime
According to the latest recorded crime figures in England and Wales, there has been a steep rise in violence. Knife…
Why is Virgin East Coast ditching its quiet coach?
Virgin East Coast, reneging on its franchise, is not in anyone’s good books at the moment, but since it is…
Marx in Trier
‘Trier hates you,’ reads the graffiti outside the Karl-Marx-Wohnhaus in Trier. Actually, that’s a bit unfair. Trier doesn’t hate Marx,…
This is the stock market crash we needed
Since the crash ten years ago, stock markets the world over have been steadily recovering. The Dow Jones, a bellwether…
Violent crime in Sweden is soaring. When will politicians act?
January was a particularly violent month in Sweden. A 63-year-old man was killed in Stockholm by a hand grenade lying…
Michael Moorcock: Why banning opioids has been a disaster for me
Returning to the United States a short while ago I received a stern talking to from an immigration officer. Why…
Jordan Peterson doesn’t go nearly far enough
Now that I seem to have become a prophet of doom, I wonder whether I should have been a guru…
17 reasons why we should love Brexit
‘But what are you going to do with the powers?’ the minister asked, while I negotiated devolution of powers to…
