Britain’s last grown-up
A year after Queen Elizabeth’s death, Britain remains Peter Pan land
Tolkien, 50 years on
The true scale of his legacy is gradually becoming apparent
Notting Hill Carnival needs to clean up its act
The street party shouldn’t be above criticism
The end of the world
Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s best and most important film
Maaate
A short story
Rethinking “free speech”
Censorship is not only desirable but necessary if a democratic society and its laws are to function correctly
The debunker’s delusion
Fact-checking and anti-disinformation have fallen victim to the disease they sought to eradicate
Antisocial media
Welcome to the age of the TikTok thug and the home invasion influencer
The matter of Britain
Britain must rediscover its stories and dreams
Who are the British national conservatives?
The Tory right tried to sell the free market to a sceptical populist audience
Tragedy, comedy and an Italian parable
Three great novels capture a moment of change for society
Is Cheltenham beyond parody?
A books bash these days has to offer Geri and Geoff Hurst and that bloke out of Radiohead
Why Ukraine almost certainly cannot win
And why the war is likely to continue anyway
Office politics
There’s the joker, the slacker, and the bloke who just got fired
(DTB) Don’t Trust Boris
The former prime minister is up to his old tricks
Leo Varadkar is still stirring division
The former Taoiseach should have more humility
Developing nations will be forced to choose
Sitting on the fence between China and the USA is unsustainable
Democracy is being undermined in Northern Ireland
Brussels and London are both being reckless about Stormont
When the music stopped
A reflection on the inexorable decline of arts education and the rise of knee-jerk politics and managerialism
Sophocles’s lack-of-foresight saga
Families will feud, from the BC era to 2024
The attractions of extremes
Are we going to become ever more passive consumers of other people’s thoughts and memories?
