Goethe
Heroes, villains and lessons in life
Deeply erudite yet highly readable, laying many myths to rest
Goethe, a man of ideas
Even to list the academic fields in which he was a pioneer is exhausting
Twin totems of Teutonic angst
The German obsession with Goethe’s Faust and Shakespeare’s Hamlet
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
Banish the business bullshit
Vacuous business-speak is not merely irritating, it can lead to bad decisions and bad outcomes
The bonfire of British history
Absentee landlords’ neglect allows architectural jewels to be burned to the ground
The Third China Shock?
We are unprepared for the possibility of a future Chinese hegemon
Literary freedom is in the gutter
The disappearance of a praiseful review for a “cancelled” writer is as disturbing as it is bizarre
The EU’s immigration asymmetry
Ten years on, the EU still hasn’t learned Brexit’s hard lesson on migration
Light my fire
A perfect spy requires a spark for his cigarette
In defence of the Freedom of Information Act
We should not let our access to information held by public authorities be diminished
Operatic satire is a Shaw thing
The old Art has an armoury of skunk-like defence mechanisms to keep the unwashed at bay
When violence is its own reward
How do we deal with people who kill for the sake of killing?
Confessions of a Yankee Anglophile
For all our differences, Americans and Britons will never be too far apart
Sport’s regime changes
Canadian snooker has gone the way of Hungarian table tennis