Israel
If Corbyn wins, emigrating to Israel is my clear escape route
I’m currently in Israel on a press trip organised by Bicom — the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. Bicom…
Let’s find the most idiotic Brexit headlines
Gimson’s Prime Ministers, out this week, is a crisp and stylish account of every one of them. I happened to…
Saudi Arabia has united with Israel against Iran – and a desert storm is brewing
Until last weekend, the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh’s exclusive Diplomatic Quarter was colloquially known as the Princes’ Hotel. It was a…
How Britain fell for Saudi Arabia’s reforming Crown Prince
There are two ways of seeing the extraordinary rise of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince: the blood-stained debut of a new…
Highly charged territory
I first heard of this tragicomic spy romp around Israel and Palestine when Julian Barnes sang its praises in the…
Wandering Jews
Simon Schama is an international treasure. Whether on screen or in print, he is all energy, enthusiasm, dramatic gestures, emotional…
Speech therapy
Oslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a modest venue in New York. It moved to Broadway and this…
Iran is our natural ally
The Saudi town of Awamiya — like so many countless cities across Iraq, Syria and Yemen that are witnessing an…
Mysticism and metamorphosis
‘I frankly hate Descartes,’ states a character in Nicole Krauss’s new novel, Forest Dark: ‘The more he talks about following…
The good Palestinian
Shubbak, meaning ‘window’ in Arabic, is a biennial festival taking place in various venues across London. The brochure reads like…
High life
New York If only my wordsmith friend Jeremy Clarke had been with me. What fun he’d have had with…
Way to go, Jeremy Corbyn – root out those Jew-haters!
A long and arduous flight back from the Caucasus, but worth it nonetheless for the meaningful protest we had staged…
Rod Liddle: Labour’s putting me on trial for thought crime
I got an email this week, from a chap called Harry, which began as follows: ‘I am writing to inform you…
Death and retribution in Beersheba
Nordic noir is passé. Now we have Israeli noir. Waking Lions is a mordant thriller written by a clinical psychologist…
Why were we going to Israel? For the winter sunshine, of course
Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Morocco: if I had picked anywhere else on the Mediterranean for a family holiday, at…
Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger is a masterpiece
I have met Dr Kissinger, properly, only three times. First, in Cairo, in 1980, when, as a junior diplomat escorting…
Feels like Chekhov scripted by a Chekhov app: Three Days in the Country at the Lyttleton reviewed
Chekhov so dominates 19th-century Russian drama that Turgenev doesn’t get much of a look-in. His best known play, A Month…
Mission near impossible
Operation Thunderbolt was, Saul David contends in this gripping book, ‘the most audacious special forces operation in history’. In June…
Let’s read the riot act to the kleptocrats who are buying us out
I have signed an affidavit for a hearing in the High Court stating that Janan Harb was, to my knowledge,…
Why I still have a deep attachment to the BBC
After I failed my O-levels and decided to leave school, my father suggested I go to Israel to work on…
How Ed Miliband lost the Jewish vote
Labour’s leader would be the first Jewish prime minister since Disraeli – so how has he alienated so many Jewish voters?
Birmingham Royal Ballet review: A Father Ted Carmina Burana
We ballet-goers may be the most self-deceiving audiences in theatre. Put a ‘new work’ in front of us and half…
Bad Jews at the Arts Theatre reviewed: strange, raw, obsessive and brilliant
Bad Jews has completed its long trek from a smallish out-of-town venue to a full-scale West End berth. Billed as…
The Conservatives should be the party of immigrants — and here’s how they can be
For a long while, the Conservatives have been puzzled about their lack of popularity among immigrants. In theory, the Conservative…
Portrait of the week
Home In a Budget intended to have ‘no gimmicks, no giveaways’, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, offered pensioners…
