Race
In praise of braindead filth
Melvyn Bragg on TV: The Box That Changed The World (BBC2, Saturday) was just what you would have expected of…
A new dance piece in which race definitely matters: Ballet Black’s Triple Bill reviewed
Ballet’s romantic mantra could be summed up by John Keats’s ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, in which a young…
Jean Genet’s fascinating play, The Maids, is botched at Trafalgar Studios
The Maids is a fascinating document. Written in 1947, Jean Genet’s drama portrays a pair of serving girls who enact…
Why I now believe in positive discrimination
The Prime Minister no doubt knew he would be fanning the flames when he waded into the argument about the…
From the archive: On compelling shirkers to do their duty
From ‘The Position of the Government’, The Spectator, 15 January 1916: Any man who knew the nature of Englishmen, or…
Paul Theroux returns home — to guns and evangelism
During the first ten pages of this long work Paul Theroux, on a journey through the American South, meets two…
The sophisticates are wrong about Cleveland, Ohio
To Cleveland, Ohio, where middle America’s middle class begins its great Midwest sprawl. I’ve always wanted to visit Cleveland because…
Serena Williams is an all-time great – but is it wrong not to declare her the greatest?
Serena Williams, according to some commentators the greatest woman who has ever graced this earth of ours, will complete the…
Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses is being staged without a single black actor. So what?
Trevor Nunn is staging Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses without a single black actor. So what, says Robert Gore-Langton
A political history of The Clangers
Dropping the Clangers The Clangers made a comeback on BBC television. Some Clanger facts: — The actors doing the voices…
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…
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…
'Black,' 'coloured', 'BME' - any kind of label is essentially racist. It's time to move on
How should we refer to non-white people, and foreigners in general, given that of course we do sometimes need to…
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…
The deep instinct that Britain’s immigration debate still ignores
The deep instinct that the immigration debate still ignores
Warning: these books could seriously damage your health
Welcome to 2015, the year that speaking and writing freely had to stop. Anything that might cause trauma to anyone…
The battle for decency has been lost
An intelligent letter from a reader, Stanislas Yassukovich CBE, warms my heart. It’s nice to know there are others as…
Is Anna Nicole’s absurd life worth our while? Not as much as Otello’s
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
Rotherham has proved it again: social work just doesn't work
The appalling abuse in Rotherham suggests it does not
Tread carefully! Your garden is saturated with racial meaning – and so is Ikea
Is your life saturated with racial meaning? The most common answer to this question, when I ask friends and acquaintances,…
