South Africa
Marlene Dumas at Tate Modern reviewed: 'remarkable'
‘Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting,’ Henri Matisse once advised, ‘should begin by cutting out his own tongue.’ Marlene…
Refugees and resilience: a story of Africa
I would love to sit in on a Jonny Steinberg interview. Over the years this South African writer has perfected…
Low life’s Limpopo legend
Not everything is forgotten in the new Johannesburg, finds Lara Prendergast
Norman Mailer’s wife comes out of the shadows
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,’ said Norman Mailer to his wife, Norris Church, after reading…
Portrait of the week
Home The last British combat troops turned over Camp Bastion in Helmand to Afghan forces and withdrew from Afghanistan after…
At least South Africa has the world’s best murder trials
South Africa’s spectacular murder trials – first Oscar Pistorius, now Shrien Dewani – help take minds off other difficulties
Why squash deserves a place in the Olympics
Thank god for the Commonwealth Games: at least they gave us a brief respite from football transfer stories. Instead of…
I think I’ve found the new Maria Callas
Some of my most enjoyable evenings, when I reviewed opera weekly for The Spectator, were spent at the Royal College…
We're all just bewildered apes – my financial adviser proves it
Depressed and demoralised after the defeat of his nation of farmers in the second Boer war, Eugène Marais, an Afrikaner…
Why America's ivory ban won't help elephants
The Duke of Cambridge deserves credit for bringing his influence to bear on the growing tragedy of the elephant, whose…
How to get around South Africa's many boundaries
There are writers whose prose style is so fluid, so easy, the reader feels as though he has been taken…
