Masks
You are being nudged
State-sponsored psychological manipulation is becoming ubiquitous
Why did behavioural scientists crave mask mandates?
The COVID pandemic exposed the nastiness of nudging
Banning masks from protests is a bad idea
Anonymity can be essential to dissent against tyrannical regimes
Faith Masks
The ideological significance of face masks, the new vestiture of the faithful
Saving Face
Like a home-made mask, our tolerance is wearing thin
So many voters got it wrong
The ignorant masses have betrayed democracy
There is no “Woke Right”
A new attempt to delineate the boundaries of acceptable opinion has failed
The afterlife of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko
Reflections on forty years since his death shook communist Poland
Exilic yearnings
Miklos Rozsa: violin concerto (LSO Live)
The death of an Anglo-Hungarian Painting
Nine months after a savage act of vandalism at Trinity College Cambridge, anger is growing at its lacklustre response
My “state of the nation” book
England’s Mean Unpleasant Land: How the Tories, Trump and TikTok Screwed Up Britain
The first victim of empire
England is an ongoing casualty of the British imperial project
Worthy instrument
York Bowen, Willam Walton: Viola concertos (SWR Music)
Lightweight Kate Winslet
Our most versatile of English roses must accept that one role is beyond even her
A beguiling star who loved melodrama
Taylor’s hunger for money, flashy gizmos and flashier gewgaws found its echo in Burton’s need to forsake the classics
How Britain has imported Bangladeshi politics
A failure to take immigration and integration seriously means that Britain has to deal with other nation’s problems
