Mental Patients
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
Don’t let it go
Communal singing is good for the soul
How the Navy built Britain
Culmination of a magisterial work that entwines the story of the Royal Navy with the scientific, cultural and social history of our nation
The case for duelling
A Modest Proposal: If yes to assisted suicide, then why not duelling?
How Australia punished smokers and normalised firebombs
Smoking restrictions have fuelled the Australian tobacco wars
An open letter against assisted dying
118 academics oppose the Leadbeater Bill
The WASPI women should blame themselves
No injustice has been done to them
So many voters got it wrong
The ignorant masses have betrayed democracy
When America ignored a slaughter
Whatever America’s flaws, its absence from the global stage leaves a space quickly filled by far more malevolent actors
Writing lives
The life story of the biography, from Victorian glorification to Bloomsbury boldness to contemporary obliquity
Clickbait criticism
A depressing, inarticulate complaint of a generation too paralysed even to make art
Worthy instrument
York Bowen, Willam Walton: Viola concertos (SWR Music)
