R.W. Johnson
R.W. Johnson, an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, is the doyen of international commentators on South Africa. He lives in Cape Town.
A light in the darkness
A pioneering school ofers a new vision for South Africa’s failing education system
Imaginary friends
The idea of a synthetic companion that knows everything about you goes well beyond friendship
Blue-collar brilliance
1970s Pittsburgh wasn’t just a steel town: it was the steel town
Kemi Badenoch has a problem with the truth
From wokeness, to housing, to immigration her words don’t match the facts
Stolen moments
Smoking is a precious social currency in a fast atomising world
Anti-industrial strategy
Manufacturing has been systematically devastated by successive governments
Twilight of the hacks
“A Very Royal Scandal” and the emptiness of modern journalism
Life amid the ruins
Any captured, destroyed city, offers the same problems for the new owners
Death on demand?
Euthanasia offers only bad choices to the most vulnerable patients
Eric Fogey
Dr Fogey genuinely does believe that virtually every enlightened measure of the past 200 years was a mistake
Lucy Letby’s defenders have failed
They have not provided cause to doubt her conviction
Why can’t there be more vampires?
Bloodsucking, in various more or less metaphorical guises, is after all opera’s happiest place