Terrorism
Who are we kidding – of course terror is a political issue
It was pleasing to see that old clip of Gerry Adams endorsing Jeremy Corbyn re-emerge, just before the acts of…
Only fitfully funny: Chris Morris’s The Day Shall Come reviewed
The Day Shall Come is a second feature from British satirist Chris Morris and like the first, Four Lions, it…
Revealed: Boko Haram’s child army
In the rush to declare Isis dead now that its caliphate has been routed from Iraq and Syria, it’s easy…
What drives Emily Maitlis?
It can’t be easy to find yourself on the other end of the microphone when you’re a journalist of the…
Why do we still use the Qwerty keyboard layout and not Dvorak?
‘Can you fly down this evening?’ she was asked by her boss in the Delhi office of the BBC. ‘Yes,…
How not to fight a war on terror
It has become commonplace to describe terror attacks as ‘senseless’. The horrific Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, which cost…
And I think to myself, not a wonderful world…
The story of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan is an interesting one, I think, for what it tells us about…
Tories who side with Labour on the customs union will be rebelling over a fantasy
Jeremy Corbyn wants Britain to ‘stay in a customs union’, according to the BBC. The phrase does not make sense.…
Alastair Campbell’s mix of football and terrorism makes for an accomplished thriller
Alastair Campbell is a man of many parts. Journalist, spin doctor extraordinaire, diarist and now novelist. For this, his third…
There are many scenes in this overlong play that consist, literally, of drivel: John reviewed
The NT’s new production, John, is by a youngish American playwright, Annie Baker. We Brits tend to assume that ‘john’…
Returning jihadis must be brought to justice
At first sight, the evidence presented in David Anderson’s report into the four terror attacks committed between March and June…
Security overkill is terror’s real triumph
The moment the news broke on Halloween that an Uzbek in a rental truck had just killed eight people on…
Calling Paddock a ‘lone wolf’ isn’t racist
It’s been nearly two weeks since Stephen Paddock committed mass murder in Las Vegas and the FBI is still casting…
Navigating a new world
In the 1890s, when British-owned ships carried 70 per cent of all seaborne trade, legislators worried about the proportion of…
Verbal diarrhoea
In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus…
Ratings war
Planning for the ‘war of the future’ is something generals and politicians have been doing for the past 150 years.…
Accept this as the new normal? Never
Not long after the Parsons Green Tube bombing, another of those viral, defiant-in-the-face-of-terror cartoons started doing the rounds. It was…
A clash of loyalties
If someone was to lob the name Antigone about, many of us would smile and nod while trying to remember…
Straight to hell
No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…
We’re losing the cat-and-mouse terror game
I wonder how Mohammad Khan is getting on in his legal action against Virgin Atlantic. Mo — a Muslim, the…
A clash of creeds
This is a very modern novel. Terrorist atrocity sits side by side with the familiar and the mundane. Where better…
Books aren’t medicine. They’re more powerful than that
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
How moderate are moderate Muslims?
‘What’s in the news this week?’ I asked my wife as she browsed the first newspaper we had seen for…
Trevor Phillips's documentary on Muslims was shocking - but not surprising
‘Our findings will shock many people,’ promised Trevor Phillips at the beginning of What British Muslims Really Think (Channel 4,…
How our politicians – and media – are helping terrorists win
Publicity and panic make us all accessories to jihadi murders
