Society

Saturday

Melissa Kite

I’m stuck in a house of madness

“I want to learn Iranian,” said my father, resolutely, as he watched the bombing on TV. “Farsi,” I said, thinking I would talk to him about that very happily on the basis it was better than helping him contact the Ukrainian government so he can fight the Russians. “What’s that?” he said. “Farsi,” I repeated. “Parcel?” he said. But it was pointless trying to explain, for he was up and looking out the window and telling me to look in the parcel box. We were waiting for the special food I had ordered for the new cat someone irresponsibly rehomed to my parents and which already has a stress condition

madness
extremist
Toby Young

Am I an extremist?

The Communities Secretary Steve Reed recently rose in the House of Commons to unveil “Protecting What Matters,” the British government’s new “action plan” to “strengthen social cohesion” and “tackle division.” According to the accompanying press release: “Millions of families, friends and neighbors will feel a stronger sense of community, unity and national pride thanks to renewed efforts to stamp out extremism, hate and division announced today.” I was not among those millions. Conspicuous by omission in the announcement was any mention of Islamist extremism. The impression given by the minister was that “those who try to divide us” and “subvert our shared values” are not the Muslim students mourning the

Friday

Lionel Shriver

Another interview goes awry…

Twenty minutes into what seemed a routine softball literary interview for Bloomberg TV in London last month, the conversation took a prickly turn. My interviewer had tripped across some remark in one of my podcast appearances that set her off. So much for talking about my new novel. For the following 20 minutes, leaning over the table and poking at the air between us, she proceeded to hector me about why I seemed to discuss Muslims in general terms rather than as individuals. I objected that she was being disingenuous. Journalists regularly address issues involving groups of people in general terms. (For an opinion piece, I’m to interview all 2

interview

Thursday

Lachlan Cartwright

I crashed Rupert Murdoch’s birthday party

“This one is kinda dirty. Let’s see what the other one looks like.” Less than two hours before the guests started arriving for Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday party and a manager at the high-end Manhattan chophouse had spotted a stain on the welcome mat. It turns out they keep not one but two back-up red carpets at the Grill. I’d arrived hours earlier, accompanied by my photographer after receiving a tip-off the great and good of Murdoch-world would be descending on the venue. My plan – having learned every tabloid trick in the book from an early career at the Sun – was to have my snapper hose every Murdoch

rupert murdoch
Sarah Beth Spraggins

When women exit stage right

At the event Melania Trump hosted for Women’s History Month, the ladies in the audience had perfect blowouts and wore pastel dresses. But the speakers who took the stage were tough. They included an Olympic athlete, a single mother who worked as a waitress and Melania herself. Most of the women honored were notorious for being abrasive: among them Pam Bondi and Karoline Leavitt. The women in the crowd didn’t clap politely but cheered and hollered, as if the East Room chairs were bleachers at a football game. Rumor on the street is Leavitt, who is pregnant, will only receive three weeks of maternity leave from her role as White

Wednesday

Roger Kimball

Dinner in Tehran, anyone?

Who wants to join me for dinner in Tehran or Havana? I suspect that both will be open for business very soon. I suppose we could even go to Caracas. As I write, the American flag has been raised at the American Embassy there for the first time in seven years. Amazing, isn’t it? And in Cuba? In mid-March, protesters were setting fire to the office of the Communist party in the town of Morón in the Ciego de Ávila province. Elsewhere across the island, protesters were in the street shouting, “Down with communism!” The nervous Cuban government released dozens of political prisoners. Since Donald Trump cut off its supply

gay press
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

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