Mental Institutions
What’s it like to have a home? Part II
Decades later, I remembered my mother’s mental patients
What’s it like to have a home? Part I
In the 1980s, Britain closed most of its mental hospitals, and some of the patients became my friends
The Met is watching you
We are passively accepting the development of a society of hyper-surveillance
Irish politicians have lost touch with the people
The failed “modernisation” of the Constitution may not be a one-off failure for Irish liberals
Grimdull
The fantasy genre is afflicted by a dull and tedious obsession with adolescent cynicism, prurient scenes and one dimensional anti-heroes
Grossly offensive censorship
A new ruling offers hope for an end to preposterous rulings over “malicious communications”
Dumbing down the priesthood
Unless the Church reinstates rigorous college-based training for clerics, it will wither away
Chasing votes on foreign soil
Viktor Orbán has created a pipeline of support for his Fidesz political project by granting full citizenship to thousands of ethnic Hungarians in Romania
Whisperings of the cruel sea
Britten: Concertos (Orfeo)
Recasting the Crown for modern Britain
This progressive historian’s real charge against the monarchic institution is one of “complacency”
Exhibiting military history
Four new exhibitions offer vivid insights into different experiences of war