Society

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

Why is the ‘gay press’ so cowardly on Iran?

Sometimes the obvious is so obvious that people forget to state it. So let me observe one small footnote among recent obvious things. At the end of February, Donald Trump killed the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and most of the senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary government in Iran. There are many things to be said against the Ayatollah and his friends. Since 1979 they have repressed the population of Iran and hurtled one of the great civilizations backward by a millennium. From the start of the revolution they have murdered their domestic opponents by the thousands. They have shot students in the head when they came out onto the streets

gay press

Tuesday

Dot Wordsworth

A meta-analysis of meta

“That’s really meta,” said my husband, attempting to imitate a stoned hippie at a festival, but only achieving his usual character role of a tipsy retired major in a Hampstead saloon bar. I had been trying to pin down what people think they mean by meta. The dominant element is the self-referential, as in a review in the Guardian of James Acaster playing a tribute act to James Acaster and “making meta-merry in a carnival of self-satire.” We must clear the ground with a brief visit to metaphysic. This was first found in a translation made in 1387 by the estimable John Trevisa, the Cornish-born vicar of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, and

Steve Morris

My phobia is not to be sneezed at

In January 1894, an assistant of Thomas Edison made a five-second silent film of Fred Ott taking snuff and then sneezing. It was the second ever film to be copyrighted – and it started with a sneeze. The sneeze is a blessing and a curse, associated with both good fortune and ill omen. In ancient Greece it was a prophetic sign from the gods – a sneeze could confirm the gods’ blessing of a decision. By the end of the 6th century, with plague sweeping through Rome, it had become associated with illness and death. Pope Pelagius II died from plague midsneeze. His successor, Gregory the Great, declared by papal

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how do I seat lesbians at a dinner party?

Q. I’m getting married next year and, instead of having a wedding list, my boyfriend and I would like to ask for donations toward our honeymoon. We are aiming to travel to South Korea with any proceeds. My future mother-in-law has said it would be very rude to ask people for money, but the problem is that, between us, my boyfriend and I have got everything we need to equip our flat. Any advice, Mary? – S.D., Epsom A. It’s not so much that it would be rude to ask for money but that it would be unproductive. Most wedding guests are psychologically primed to want to play their part

Rory Sutherland

‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ is genius marketing

I recently delivered a speech to mark the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s second-best book: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The year 1776 was a momentous one for many reasons. It saw the installation of James Watt’s first steam engine, the recognition of Captain Cook by the Royal Society for his work in preventing scurvy and his departure on his final and ultimately fatal voyage. It witnessed the publication of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Common Sense by Thomas Paine. If you think Donald Trump is anomalous, you are 100 percent wrong It also saw one of

Lloyd Evans

Do I have what it takes to be a magistrate?

I’m thinking of becoming a magistrate. Before applying, I was advised to attend a few sessions and find out how it all works. My first case was a bag theft from a London pub. The accused, an Algerian football ace, pleaded guilty through an interpreter. The court heard that his glittering football career had been cut short by “an accident” and he was currently living in London “with the support of friends.” The magistrate, a kindly, soft-spoken redhead, fined him £60 and made a note of his “good character.” She reduced his fine by £20 as a reward for pleading guilty. The defendant lounged against the rail of the dock

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

How to master the left-wing brag

No one likes a blatant boaster. So, as adults, we learn that if we want to boast, we must be subtle about it. The way to show off without being loathed is to drop small details about your life into your conversation and your prose, to signal your taste, education, career achievements and social status. Doing this is tricky enough for right-wing people, who need to come up with subtle ways of letting others know, for example, that they can afford private school fees, went to Oxbridge, shop at Waitrose, own at least one home and go on holiday in Provence or Tuscany. Words and phrases such as “exeat,” “scraped

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland is embarrassed by St. Patrick’s Day

Some readers may remember a particularly infamous episode of The Simpsons which saw the town of Springfield descend into anarchy during their annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. As the crowds thronged Main Street, a drunken brawl erupted, prompting a shocked TV newsreader to declare: “What you are seeing is a total disregard for the things St. Patrick stood for. All this drinking, violence and destruction of property. Are these the things we think of when we think of the Irish?” Inevitably, this year’s St. Patrick’s festivals around the country are no longer a celebration of Saint Patrick and Irish traditions At the time, that episode was far more controversial with

Damian Thompson

My addiction to playing the piano is driving everyone mad

From time to time, I’ve given some famous pianists a bit of a kicking in the arts pages of this magazine. You may be a Bach specialist, but that’s no excuse for sleepwalking through all six keyboard partitas in a marathon recital. Your -Beethoven Diabelli Variations may be renowned, but don’t expect a rave review if you trap me in an intimate concert venue while you pound the keys like a pneumatic drill. You’d think, though, that a journalist who snipes at world-class soloists would have the sense to keep his own amateur playing to himself. And if he’s idiot enough to post a recording on social media, he should

Peter Jones

How the poor survived in ancient Rome

Those for whom the welfare state does not provide as much welfare as they would like might care to reflect on the plight of the Romans, for whom there was no such thing as the welfare state. A superb monograph by Kim Bowes, Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, drawing on papyrus and other finds from across the Roman and Egyptian worlds, shows in fascinating detail how the poor survived. She defines the poor as the c. 90 percent who “worked with their hands,” most of whom were farmers renting their farms (rents were not cheap). One Soterichos rented a number of small, scattered plots, with small

Adrian Wooldridge

Those who believe in liberalism must now fight for it

I’m conscious that, just as the easiest way to lose an argument is to mention Hitler, so the easiest way to lose journalistic credibility is to invoke the 1930s. Yet the similarities to our own dismal decade are now too numerous to ignore. There is the same collection of morbid symptoms: the rise of strongmen, the collapse of the political center, the intellectual organization of political hatreds. Even more worryingly, there is the same sense of hurtling toward global conflagration. The similarities begin with the disintegration of the international order. In the 1920s and 1930s, order collapsed because Britain no longer had the economic might to continue as the global

Monday

Julie Bindel

Good riddance Rene Redzepi

Last week, Rene Redzepi – often credited as having created the world’s greatest restaurant – stepped down amid explosive allegations of abuse. In my view, if the allegations of physical brutality are true, he should face criminal charges. Redzepi, founder and proprietor of Noma in Copenhagen, founded in 2003, wrote on Instagram about the recent revelations regarding his own past leadership: “I have worked to be a better leader and Noma has taken big steps to transform the culture over many years. I recognize these changes do not repair the past. An apology is not enough; I take responsibility for my own actions.” Not so long ago, such behavior would

Alexander Larman

Oscars night was one yawn after another

The results of this year’s Oscars were so predictable as to be entirely unexciting. Months ago, the pundits had called the major results: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another to win Best Film and Best Director, Jessie Buckley to win Best Actress for Hamnet, Sinners to win Best Original Screenplay. It wasn’t hard to predict because they had won these prizes in ceremony after ceremony. And so, last night in Los Angeles, events unfolded with the grim pre-ordination of awards voters who had seen what they liked and liked what they saw. The results of this year’s Oscars were so predictable as to be entirely unexciting There

Saturday

Hans-Joachim Voth

How the Nazis used vanity to lure pilots to their deaths

“Vanity of vanities… all is vanity.” Ecclesiastes had a point, but he never met a Luftwaffe fighter pilot. For the young Germans who hurled their Messerschmitts at enemy planes over the Channel, the Reich, and the Eastern Front, there was one object that could make them forget their odds of survival: a small iron cross, worn at the throat, called the Ritterkreuz – the Knight’s Cross. To many, it was worth more than money, more than leave, more than the quiet relief of making it home in one piece. It meant you were the best. And everyone could see it. The German air force extracted thousands of extra kills from

Thursday

Olivia Potts

My take on marry me chicken

I am not in the habit of bringing viral TikTok recipes here. It is a safe space, away from digestive biscuits submerged in yogurt masquerading as cheesecake, baked oats, or sugary instant coffee whipped up like foam (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, ignorance is bliss). No, here we are in the realm of tried-and-tested vintage recipes. So why am I letting marry me chicken into this sacred place? For the uninitiated, it first popped up a decade ago on an American food website called Delish, but it became the most-searched recipe on the New York Times in 2023. It’s a simple concept: chicken cooked in a creamy,

marry me chicken

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Will Iran scupper King Charles’s US state visit?

In April, King Charles is scheduled to visit the United States to mark 250 years since America achieved its independence. Given that Britain has hosted President Trump twice – once in each term – it seemed a relatively easy piece of reciprocity. Pageantry, pomp, the King and Queen smiling and waving a lot, photo opportunities with the President, Vice President and anyone else who wants something to show their grandchildren, and little of any lasting worth achieved. How things change. Now, after the beginning of the Iran war, there is a growing groundswell of support on both sides of the Atlantic for the state visit to be postponed, if not

King Charles

Tuesday

Graham Watts

What Timothée Chalamet gets wrong about opera and ballet

In February, Timothée Chalamet said to his fellow actor Matthew McConaughey, as part of a CNN and Variety town hall: “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera or things that are, hey, let’s keep this thing alive even though it’s like no one cares about this thing anymore.” The studio audience laughed along with Chalamet, while McConaughey weighed in with, “yeah, yeah, yeah, we hear you.” Perhaps realizing the offense he was causing, Chalamet added, “with all due respect to the ballet and opera people out there, I just lost 14 cents in viewership.” Two weeks passed before the video of this went viral, leading to widespread

Peter Jones

Greek tips on how to beat Iran

In 500 BC, Persia (modern Iran) was the most powerful state in the known world, ruling an area of more than two million square miles from the Balkans and Egypt to central Asia (nearly half of the world’s population). In 499 BC, Athens and a number of other Greek states rebelled against its empire and incredibly defeated it in the ensuing Persian Wars (390-379 BC). The Greek historian Herodotus (d. c. 425 BC) wrote up those wars after traveling extensively around the whole region. He was as fascinated by different cultures as he was by the war itself, contrasting the Persian way of life with the Greek. For example, he

Scott McConnell

I spent 25 years fighting neocons. Then Trump became one

Like everyone, I’m glued to the news coming out of Iran. I’m experiencing some depression, as one might, upon realizing that much of what one has worked on for 25 years has suddenly gone up in smoke, destroyed when Donald Trump discovered he was pretty much a neocon after all. Like everyone else, I have no idea what will happen in Iran, whether Trump’s bombing and perhaps breaking apart a very unpopular regime will lead to something better, or just chaos, a failed state spitting out a cohort of embittered men. But one can’t help but acknowledge the American right really likes bombing foreign countries, despite what had seemed an

neocon
William Atkinson

Why my mustache had to go

I loved my mustache. Unfortunately, my fondness for it seemed inversely proportionate to its popularity among my peers. After much unsolicited feedback from friends (“You look like a young Peter Mandelson”) and online strangers (“You look like a 1970s porn star”), I put a poll on my Instagram asking my followers whether or not I should scrap it. Four-fifths said I should. After a brief consideration of my options (ignore the results? Rerun the vote? My mustache was making me think like a Latin American dictator), I reluctantly shaved. God how I miss it. There is something intoxicating about a mustache – a small hedgerow on his top lip can