Children

Who first committed ‘cultural appropriation’?

5 September 2020 9:00 am

Culture clashes The pop star Adele was accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for adopting a Jamaican hairstyle for the online Notting…

Children who died of Covid-19 were already seriously ill, new study shows

28 August 2020 10:33 pm

It has been clear from the start of the Covid-19 crisis – from Wuhan’s experience, before cases were confirmed in…

What explains the rising number of children with gender issues?

15 August 2020 12:22 am

I have recently read a fascinating new paper, via a Mail on Sunday report, about the growing number of children…

Letters: Why is the problem of working-class white boys not considered worth solving?

25 July 2020 9:00 am

Left-behind boys Sir: Christopher Snowdon’s perceptive and informative article (‘The lost boys’, 18 July) reflects perfectly my own experiences in…

The lost boys: the white working class is being left behind

18 July 2020 9:00 am

Britain’s forgotten demographic

The best recordings of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges

6 June 2020 9:00 am

‘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

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.’…

If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read

7 March 2020 9:00 am

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

7 December 2019 9:00 am

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

2 November 2019 9:00 am

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

12 October 2019 9:00 am

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?

12 October 2019 9:00 am

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

5 October 2019 9:00 am

‘Hands up which other university parents are bloody glad to have got rid of their lumpen, food-gobbling, space-invading kids…’ When…

Leo Jemison (Miles), Elen Willmer (Flora) and Sophie Bevan (Governess) in The Turn of the Screw at Garsington Opera

Deft, elegant and genuinely chilling: Garsington’s Turn of the Screw reviewed

13 July 2019 9:00 am

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?

4 May 2019 9:00 am

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

24 November 2018 9:00 am

When I proposed to Caroline back in 2000, she was a trainee solicitor and I was a freelance journalist. In…

‘He strikes me dumb with admiration.’ Van Gogh on Howard Pyle’s pirate illustrations

The facts – and fiction – of piracy

17 November 2018 9:00 am

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

29 September 2018 9:00 am

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

15 September 2018 9:00 am

This column is not in my interest. But then, not for the first time. I cannot count the conversations conducted…

Let’s go fly a kite...

The highs – and lows – of learning to fly a kite

25 August 2018 9:00 am

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

28 July 2018 9:00 am

There was a time when middle-class liberals used to complain that the English were a nation of child haters. They…

Girl power – or groupthink in written form?

Who really wants to read feminist children’s books?

30 June 2018 9:00 am

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?

12 May 2018 9:00 am

Smiley face. Sad face. Smoochy face. Sick face. Edvard Munch ‘Scream’ face. How are you feeling today? Any of the…

Adult treats in RNCM’s Hansel and Gretel

This Hansel and Gretel has ‘classic’ stamped all over it

7 April 2018 9:00 am

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

10 February 2018 9:00 am

To mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage — if a little oddly — Channel 4 on Tuesday brought us…