Children
The lost boys: the white working class is being left behind
Britain’s forgotten demographic
The best recordings of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges
‘I don’t want to do my work. I want to go for a walk. I want to eat all the…
The world of make-believe is stranger than we realise
Last summer, in the bc era, I took my then three-year-old to a new group play session: ‘Lottie’s Magic Box.’…
If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read
If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read
It’s possible to talk to children about politics without leading them in one direction
My six-year-old son announced, from the back of the car, that he was backing Boris Johnson. My wife, who’s voting…
Children’s literature has become horribly right-on
There was a spat the other week about a children’s book, Equal to Everything: Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court,…
Extinction Rebellion proves Aristotle was right about the follies of youth
Extinction Rebellion is blocking the streets again, foolishly demanding the impossible on a very important issue. But what does one…
Why do we keep pretending that children are wiser than adults?
We’ve begun to behave as if young people are special; more virtuous and wiser than adults. It’s wrong and it’s…
At last, the TV-hogging space invaders have returned to university
‘Hands up which other university parents are bloody glad to have got rid of their lumpen, food-gobbling, space-invading kids…’ When…
Deft, elegant and genuinely chilling: Garsington’s Turn of the Screw reviewed
Think of the children in opera. Not knowing sopranos and mezzos, pigtailed and pinafored or tightly trousered-up to look child-like,…
Did the makers of When I Grow Up have no qualms turning a small boy into a hate figure?
Channel 4’s When I Grow Up had an important lesson for middle-class white males everywhere: you’re never too young to…
My wife has gone back to work – and I’ve turned into a SADDO
When I proposed to Caroline back in 2000, she was a trainee solicitor and I was a freelance journalist. In…
The facts – and fiction – of piracy
Avast there, scurvy dogs! For a nation founded on piracy (the privateer Sir Francis Drake swelled the exchequer by raiding…
Of course the young like socialism – they’re taught to
It beggars belief that Jeremy Corbyn can, with a straight face, announce that capitalism has failed and we’d all be…
It’s not transphobic to question transgenderism
This column is not in my interest. But then, not for the first time. I cannot count the conversations conducted…
The highs – and lows – of learning to fly a kite
I’ve flown only three kites in my life. My stepfather bought me the first. I remember seeing him from a…
Children are everywhere – and they’re spoiling everything
There was a time when middle-class liberals used to complain that the English were a nation of child haters. They…
Who really wants to read feminist children’s books?
A friend of mine who commissions book reviews has added a sub-category to the list of titles coming up: ‘femtrend’,…
Is it any wonder children can’t express themselves when all they have is emojis?
Smiley face. Sad face. Smoochy face. Sick face. Edvard Munch ‘Scream’ face. How are you feeling today? Any of the…
This Hansel and Gretel has ‘classic’ stamped all over it
It’s been a good couple of weeks for cuddly toys in opera. A big floppy Eeyore is the only comfort…
Channel 4 marked women’s suffrage with an episode of the Secret Life of Five-Year-Olds
To mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage — if a little oddly — Channel 4 on Tuesday brought us…
Mary solves your problems: What do you say when a screaming child is ruining your lunch?
Q. My wife and I were having lunch in our local bistro. A boy of about two was wandering around…
The kids aren’t all right
Our histrionic parenting is making today’s young people mad, unhappy and fat
The danger of no danger
We all know about helicopter parents and how terrible they can be. In New York, where I live, a mother…
Generation Snowflake: how we train our kids to be censorious cry-babies
We’re training our children to be thin-skinned, censorious and belligerently entitled
