Miss Universe
The tyranny of beauty
We all enjoy a looker, but that does not justify rampant discrimination
Draining the swamp
Residents are hopeful that the mayor’s grip on Venice might at last be easing
The fables of Davos Man
Yuval Noah Harari has written another long book with little wisdom
Cities of the mind
19th century English towns live on in our collective imagination
Butchering La bohème
Opera is “relatable” already
Oxford elects
Meet the denizens of Oxford’s disenchanted garden currently competing for the university’s top sinecure
The professional classes don’t understand manual work
They cannot understand distinctions between different kinds of labour
Disaster zone
It’s a big job says Keir Starmer, and it’s not our mess we’ll be clearing up
Twilight of the hacks
“A Very Royal Scandal” and the emptiness of modern journalism
Hot desking
We, the special advisers of the Labour Party, seek justice!
Blue-collar brilliance
1970s Pittsburgh wasn’t just a steel town: it was the steel town
This is England, nor are we out of it
Englishness isn’t an ethnicity, or even an idea. It’s more like auto-destructive art
