William Brown turns one hundred
“I’ll thcream and thcream and thcream until I’m thick”
Rabble-rouser in chief
Our increasingly polarised and angry age wants not entertainment, but preachers
Imagine John hadn’t died
It’s easy if you try
The myth of the Victorian Christmas
Our values today are of consumerism and instant gratification, inherited from our Victorian forebears
Bring back bawdiness
Bawdy humour and the pantomime go together like sausages and mash, whatever you make of that banger
The knife-wielding obituarist
Tom Sutcliffe’s obituary of composer Stephen Sondheim was ill-judged and vindictive
Male authors: the sun also sets
Give up writing, men – the world will be a happier place when you do
What happened to sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll?
Music today is anodyne compared to the heydays of Britpop and the sixties and seventies
John Saumarez Smith: a bibliophile and a gentleman
The Heywood Hill bookseller has died
Good-natured amateurishness
British musical theatre has nothing on the American slickness
Opposing big government means opposing climate change
We need a market-led course to net zero
The dangerous fallacy of “self-deterrence”
The concept makes little sense and could create serious risks
Save nursing from the universities
There is no need for nursing to be a graduate only occupation
The first female President will be Republican
American conservatives are far less averse to assertive women than the political left
Belle époque on a plate
The Goring offers a level of enchantment seldom found in the environs of Victoria Station
The contested legacy of “Rocky Horror”
How should we interpret a film that is much more than a light-hearted camp classic?
The personal has become far too political
Something has gone very wrong when we are acutely aware of politics
Fleeing Sally Rooney’s god
Why have critics been ignoring one of the novelist’s most important themes?
Where are the calls for blasphemy laws coming from?
We should consider the voters as well as the politicians
An excess of Fauré
Gabriel Fauré: Violin concerto (Naxos), Complete piano works (Calliope)
AI is a terrible poet
It has no sense for true meaning and beauty in language
