political correctness
Poems are the Duracell batteries of language, says Simon Armitage
Ezra Pound in ABC of Reading: ‘Dichten = condensare.’ Meaning poetry is intensification, ‘the most concentrated form of verbal expression’.…
We need Voltaire more than ever
New York The high life has gone with the wind because of you know what. The last time I went…
Jordan Peterson is the Savonarola of our times
Philip Hensher feels he should be on Jordan Peterson’s side, but finds it a struggle
How stupid do the script writers of Sky’s Devils think we are?
Here’s a worried question I want to plant in your head: when is TV drama going to start depicting the…
The myth of American freedom
Gstaad Imagine a beautiful, sexy woman, an Ava Gardner or a Lily James, with a wart on the end of…
Sick, puerile, inappropriate and delicious: Amazon Prime's The Boys reviewed
There’s a delicious scene in the new season of Amazon’s superheroes-gone-bad series The Boys. The chief superhero Homelander (Antony Starr)…
How to have a happy old age
Gstaad Birthdays at my age are for the birds, but always a good excuse for a party. Messages of…
The forgotten victims of communism
I just read a piece by Scott McConnell in the American Conservative, a magazine we co-founded 18 years ago. He…
The death of free speech
Oh, to be in America, where cultural decay and self-destruction compete equally with hyper-feminist and anti-racist agendas. Gone with the…
Radio 4's new H.P. Lovecraft adaptation will give you the chills
Of all the many things I’ve learned from the radio so far this decade, the most deranging is that the……
Prince Andrew and me
No use piling on where Prince Andrew is concerned. It’s a sorry business, and he’s not among the brightest either.…
The joy of my grandson’s baptism
They were putting the finishing touches to the giant tent as I drove up to Schloss Wolfsegg after an hour’s…
Gloriously un-PC: Chris Lilley’s Swiftian, scabrous, gleefully misanthropic Lunatics reviewed
‘Unfunny, boring and utterly unrelenting,’ says the Guardian’s one-star review of Chris Lilley’s new sketch series Lunatics (Netflix). And if…
Sebastian Flyte had nothing on me: memories of a misspent youth
Charlottesville is an enchanting Virginia college town graced by the neoclassical architecture of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson. I flew…
Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?
‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…
I’ve never seen Coogan better or Partridge funnier: This Time with Alan Partridge reviewed
Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of…
Why truth gets you nowhere
New York There is fear and loathing in this city, with men looking over their shoulders for the thought…
The new Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker is a delight – but the script isn’t
You won’t be aware of this because the BBC has been keeping it very quiet. But the new Doctor Who…
All the good non-fiction that was ever on TV was made by middle-aged men
All the good non-fiction things that were ever on TV — from Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation to David Attenborough’s Planet Earth…
Holidays in Hell – Such A Pleasant Getaway from the BBC
Apparently there’s a new ‘character’ on University Challenge. I wouldn’t know. Last year, I vowed never again to raise my…
When diversity means uniformity
I’d been suffering under the misguided illusion that the purpose of mainstream publishers like Penguin Random House was to sell…
Were all those young lives lost at Normandy in vain?
I’m back in New York and digesting the five glorious days spent in Normandy. What was the fighting all about,…
Once you get over its political correctness, Netflix’s Godless is a cracker
Boy came to me the other night in a state of dismay. ‘Dad, I just turned on Match of the…
Everyone’s doing a mea culpa these days — except me
The faux Leonardo that sold for 400 million greenbacks — plus a 50 million fee for Christie’s — was a…
When did fiction become so dangerous?
The assignment of books for review has always been haphazard. Fellow fiction writers can be tempted either to undermine the…
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