Martin Luther King
Why does James Baldwin matter so much now?
The rise of Queer Studies and Black Lives Matter has led to renewed interest in Baldwin – who was exasperated in life with being categorised by colour or as ‘gay’
The game’s up for ‘anti-racist’ racism
There are only a few rules to column-writing. One of the strictest is never to waste time bouncing off the…
The sin of neutrality
Yet again, millions of civilians across the Horn of Africa are starving. The world blames the crisis on drought and…
Why great speeches are made for stage and screen
Curious thing, writer’s block. If you believe it exists. Terry Pratchett didn’t. ‘There’s no such thing,’ he said. ‘It was…
Can the republic survive?
‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ That was Ben Franklin’s famous response when asked, as the Constitutional Convention ended…
I will not be silent
After the horrible death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I started to grow increasingly uncomfortable by what I saw. I…
The strange new liberal attraction to the feds
In a political era defined by abnormalities, few developments are as bizarre as the newfound liberal admiration for federal law…
In praise of the semicolon, a most maligned punctuation mark
Now, how shall I start this review? I loved this book. I really did. (Too abrupt.) I loved this book,…
On the run with Martin Luther King’s assassin
This newly translated novel by the Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina is really two books, spliced together in alternating chapters.…
Has Aung San Suu Kyi become a puppet of Burma’s generals?
Peter Popham is commendably quick off the blocks with this excellent account of the run-up to last November’s Burmese general…
Selma review: rich, nuanced, heartbreaking
Selma, the civil rights film that stars David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, undoubtedly contains the best and most powerful…
My four great loves were unrequited (though I had a chance with Ginger Rogers)
I had a short chat with BBC radio concerning the actor Jack Nicholson, whom I knew slightly during the Seventies…
