A statement flower
The most fanatical have spent fortunes to find the rarest and finest of these blooms
Silk Road splendour
The bare plain is now home to a million souls, their mosques, cathedrals and some very exclusive hotels
Into the setting sun…
Next summer, head west to Pembrokeshire
Imagine there’s no Gove
Who’s in the room matters, and there were some which would have been better off without Michael Gove
A Royal good time
Racing brings the country together in a convulsion of delirious democracy
Walk tall in these shoes
If you buy the best kit, it will last much longer
Heaven scent
Harrods is no help in the quest for Raffouche
Steering clear of titfer tat
We now are seeing the first flowering of a head-dress renaissance
What makes a gentleman tick?
Of course, there are watches and there are watches, and then there are watches
Pen pusher
My fascination with fountain pens
You were warned
Badenoch’s election means bad news for the Tories
Don’t patronise female students
It’s insulting to think that women have to be treated with kid gloves
Will Starmer’s immigration gambit backfire?
The prime minister might have opened a box that he cannot close
Total eclipse of the art?
Activistic artists and curators are making art a niche political endeavour
The grand Budapest hotel
The Hungarian Prime Minister’s office gives Orbán the space to think
International courts are largely irrelevant
An institutional spider’s web cannot stop a geopolitical elephant
A macabre sense of humour
Ligeti, Bartok: String quartets (BIS)
White male conservatives for identity politics
Kemi Badenoch’s supporters should have fewer illusions
Heroes, villains and lessons in life
Intellectual history, sneered at in Oxford 40 years ago, is all the rage there now
How to end the free speech crisis
The right must plan to demolish the four pillars of Britain’s stifling anti-speech laws
Conservatives can no longer trust institutions
Institutions are only as effective as the people within them and the culture beyond them
