Books
This way, madness lies
Using the name Shakespeare in your book title shouldn’t do anything for sales
Don’t worry, novelists are still envious and bitter
Unlike Douglas Murray, John Self thinks the satirical novel isn’t dead
A little too mature
In Brideshead, the overriding feeling is that surely the punchline is to come. It never does
Who let the dons out?
Leave literary reviews to reviewers rather than score-settling academics
Artists shaped by war
Practically all the artists in the book are traumatised in one way or another, and all experienced war
Intellectual Red Bull
László Földényi’s essays are a collection that will leave you feeling sharp and more cultured, says Tibor Fischer
Satire needs to find new targets
There are still plenty of institutions worth mocking
From Brick Lane to Brixton
Stoddard Martin delves into a world beyond police and courtroom, with its own code of right and wrong, in Gerald Jacobs’s Pomeranski
Super Thursday
The busiest day of the publishing calendar offers hope for some, but ruin for many
Dining out, dying out
Alexander Larman on William Sitwell’s luxurious history of eating out
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
Why they hated Ann Widdecombe
Fair-minded people could agree or disagree with her opinions. Left-wing bigots hated her for not abandoning them
What is wrong now was wrong before
Julia Gillard should not pretend that the “unintended consequences” of the gender debate were unknowable
Ethnic minorities are abandoning Labour
It is not just Muslim voters who have been abandoning the Labour Party
Andy Burnham’s devolution delusions
Think central government is the only problem? Look around you
Today Havering, tomorrow Westminster
The local elections exposed a political class united mainly by its inability to feel embarrassment
Good enough for politics
We should be more willing to declare some political problems solved
Worstall’s Corollary
Rare earths expose a fatal flaw at the heart of industrial strategy: governments intervene in systems they do not remotely understand
Literary freedom is in the gutter
The disappearance of a praiseful review for a “cancelled” writer is as disturbing as it is bizarre
The importance of ancestry
Remembering a great scholar of nationalism
Welcome to the low-trust economy
The multi-billion pound cost of Britain’s shoplifting surge
Who wants to be a patriotic millionaire?
More taxation will not solve our economic woes
Among the true believers
Belgium’s cycling culture is unique, and increasingly under threat
An artful chip
Any penalty is at heart a psychological battle between taker and keeper
Right-wingers must rediscover their principles
Internalising the logic of liberalism has made defeat inevitable