Sacred Cows
Black Lives Matter are pushing division, not unity
BLM’s radical ideas, such as defunding the police, would only make the lives of black communities worse
Middle-class hero
John Lennon’s kicking against the pricks was mere window-dressing
Empire of conformists
The NHS is immune to criticism because its deficiencies are seen as departures from its essential goodness
Charismatic charlatan
Benjamin Disraeli could change his mind without turning a hair
Fenian fantasist
No journalist has so vituperatively fed the ancestral hatreds and dormant furies of Ireland as Fintan O’Toole
The desert martinet
Viscount Montgomery: tactless, arrogant and with no instinct for politics
Dishonest Abe
He is revered as the man who freed US slaves. Yet he never intended to do so and it was he who forced a war for the Union
The prophet who didn’t do people
Friedrich von Hayek became “Hayek”, a cardboard cut-out representation.
Chronicles of an epic egomaniac
Tackling Harold Bloom
A right to protest?
The right to dissent is often at odds with the will of the mob
What’s with all the fuss over Simon Fanshawe?
The writer and activist’s nomination as Rector of Edinburgh University has been oddly controversial
The false prophets of war and turmoil
All eight of Whatmore’s subjects would have been astounded by the
stability of the British state through the 19th century
Gorgeous George returns
George Galloway was delighted to be back — but was anyone delighted to see him?
Against Britain’s two-tier policing
Street preachers should not be arrested for offending people
Toady of Whitehall
Open cruelty was met with equally shameless sycophancy
The quaintness of the campaign against public schools
The abuse was terrible but its relevance to modern politics is dubious
Rugby’s debt to Mrs T
Rugby league was transformed from a fringe working-class activity into part of national life
Playfulness and tedium
Stravinsky, Petrushka; Debussy, Jeux and Prelude (Decca)
Realism is not the same as self-pity
There is a limit to how much women can physically protect themselves from men
Men deserve single-sex spaces too
The campaign against the Garrick Club is tiresome and opportunistic
