When imitation is more then just flattery
An informative and entertaining history of plagiarism in its many forms
It’s no Globe
The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare by Daniel Swift
Your front-room friend
Whatever the teething troubles, wireless was a miracle that brought people together
Here be flagons
The temperance campaigners realised that a picture can achieve more than a thousand words of argument
Most Read
Tame Impala fails to impress
unconquered by a
taste of Crusader food
Gary Stevenson is wrong about wealth taxes
The popular economist is irritating, but more importantly he is mistaken
What is wrong now was wrong before
Julia Gillard should not pretend that the “unintended consequences” of the gender debate were unknowable
Why they hated Ann Widdecombe
Fair-minded people could agree or disagree with her opinions. Left-wing bigots hated her for not abandoning them
Ethnic minorities are abandoning Labour
It is not just Muslim voters who have been abandoning the Labour Party
Price caps and political pygmies
Britain’s capitalist command economy cannot let businesses be
Where is Britain’s vision?
Modern Britain has acquired a lack of national purpose, except for policies that are self-harming
The malicious and the mad
Two recent productions offer two different perspectives on dark sides of masculinity
It’s time to see Brexit through
The next government must finally drag Britain out of the European Union’s tractor beam
The Muslim modernisers
Muslim reformers do not innovate; they renew by seeking to mend what is broken
Venice Biennale 2026
Collected detritus of Biennales past, left available for recycling when there’s space to fill
Herodotus and the birth of enquiry
Before there were historians, there was Herodotus — a wandering Greek determined to discover why civilisations rise and fall
Politicians can’t handle free speech
The more criticism ministers receive online, the more determined they become to regulate what everyone else can say
Anyone could have predicted
Left-leaning commentators should not pretend to be surprised by the consequences of multiculturalism
Fast out of the blocs
how to acquire an
art collection quickly
Peeves and a weekend in Worcester
Thoroughly entertaining, darkly funny and humanely nasty