Gold
The conman who duped thousands with a patently absurd story
Promising his investors dazzling riches with his tale of hidden Ghanaian gold, the charismatic John Ackah Blay-Miezah pulled off one of the most brazen scams of the past century
A tragicomic lecture about Gold at Edinburgh Festival
A chilly August in Edinburgh. Colder than it’s been for 20 years and the city looks scruffier than ever. Locked…
Did Rishi Sunak really make an £11 billion blunder?
Could Rishi Sunak really have saved the taxpayer £11 billion by insuring against higher interest rates last year? That was…
Fun, good-natured and schmaltzy: Phantom of the Open reviewed
Phantom of the Open is a comedy-drama telling a true story that would have to be true as no one…
Peru’s beauty has been a real curse
As the planet gets more and more ravaged, the mind can begin to glaze over at the cumulative general statistics…
Patronising, clichéd and corny: BBC1’s Gold Digger reviewed
Some last taboos, it seems, can remain last taboos no matter how frequently they’re confronted. Grief, the menopause, masturbation, mental…
Sebastiao Salgado – master of monochrome, chronicler of the depths of human barbarity
Occasionally, we encounter an image that seems so ludicrously out of kilter with the modern world that we can only…
If investors are fleeing to gold, this is not the time to be smug
It came as no great surprise that the UK economy contracted by 0.2 per cent in the second quarter, following…
The scramble for Africa goes back many centuries
A thought kept recurring as I read Toby Green’s fascinating and occasionally frustrating book on the development of West Africa…
I’m teaching my kids about money – by searching for buried treasure
At the end of each year I pull out most of the New Year’s resolutions I’ve ever made — I…
The icemen cometh
You wouldn’t want to stumble upon the Scythians. Armed with battle-axes, bows and daggers, and covered in fearsome tattoos, the…
Spain’s golden age — with a silver lining
As every schoolboy knows, ‘the empire on which the sun never set’ was British, and ‘blue-blooded’ was a phrase applied…
I miss the days when French rugby was great. Thierry Dusautoir must, too
It used to be such a treat of a winter weekend, sitting down to watch France against Wales in Paris…
The bull market is five years old. Does that mean it’s nearly over?
In London and New York, share prices have risen for five years running. So is it time to sell?
Martin Vander Weyer: Bad news for pawnbrokers. Is that good news for the rest of us?
While attention has focused on the sudden ubiquity and alleged iniquity of payday lenders, boom and impending bust has infected…
