What is wrong now was wrong before
Julia Gillard should not pretend that the “unintended consequences” of the gender debate were unknowable
Running out of autobahn
Beijing’s manufacturing strategy is colliding with Europe’s self-inflicted industrial weaknesses
When art took on fascism (and lost)
Abstract activist concerns have overshadowed aesthetic production
Hippo critical
No Roman left a greater intellectual legacy than Augustine, whose writings shaped Christianity and the Western mind for more than a millennium
The gifts of gentle density
There are all but endless benefits to building more beautifully
The importance of ancestry
Remembering a great scholar of nationalism
What’s in a name?
Britain’s debate over assisted suicide is being conducted in language designed to obscure what is actually proposed
Not mad for it
I Puritani, Royal Opera, Covent Garden
AI and the Jefferson Option
Eighteenth-century advice on surviving the AI apocalypse
Ed Miliband is a bad environmentalist
He has put virtue signalling before effectiveness
Confessions of a Yankee Anglophile
For all our differences, Americans and Britons will never be too far apart
A very postmodern schism
A postmodern spectacle exposed deep divisions about the nature of truth
Why must everything move to Manchester?
Northern England is being framed in patronising reductionist terms
David Lean
the cinematic genius admired by today’s directors
Ancient bones of contention
The burgeoning and irregulated market for dinosaur skeletons
Breaking the mould
The closure of the Denby pottery factor is an example of short-term political thinking
Rage against the dying of the night
The loss of the soft-lit splendour of London after dark
An indefensible defence policy
Why the country’s strategic ambitions are incompatible with our welfare bill
Keeping us on message
The UK’s secret government propaganda unit dedicated to praising multiculturalism
The injustice of early releases
The government is failing victims for the sake of political convenience
Pleasure and persuasion
Jean Sibelius: Symphonies 1-7 (Ondine)
Ditching ancient traditions is not progress
Uniforms, oaths, titles, offices are the joints that hold together the structures of the state
When compassion kills
Decriminalising vagrancy is no act of kindness
The intractable problems pulling modern Britain apart
When does upholding free speech become an act of self-sabotage?
Vera, the doctor who defied Rasputin
A female surgeon in the chaos of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union
Murders for July
Your summer holiday reading is sorted here
The errata of history
Misprints are just one in a catalogue of literary disorders
Sweeter the second time around
There’s a real weight to some lyrics once you’re nearer the end than the beginning
Let there be lightness
Black Comedy is best viewed as a breathtakingly accomplished technical exercise
Baddiel shoots, he doesn’t score
If you want to understand English football, you will get better answers knocking on doors in Burnley than Hampstead
Fisticuffs over the fourth movement
When did classical music become so disturbingly polite?
The summer chill
Cool soups for hot days
The praises of a neglected vegetable
Summer calls for cold cucumbers
Rewatching a TV show from a lost world
In River Cottage, a chef escaped to Dorset from London in search of the good life
Unusual summer reds
Think exotic spices, maraschino cherries and curly shoes