Society

Wednesday

Patrick West

The problem with Lenny Henry’s demand for reparations

The desire to seek restitution from those who have harmed or wronged us is normal. Our instinct for justice is inbuilt. Yet, in recent decades, there has emerged in the West a perverse distortion of this impulse: the demand for financial compensation from people who have done no wrong, made by people who have not been wronged. Long-established campaigns calling on Britain to pay reparations for slavery are founded on this strange premise, and the latest figure to join their ranks is Sir Lenny Henry. The comedian and actor makes his case in a new book, The Big Payback, co-authored with Marcus Ryder, a television executive and charity boss. He argues

Ian Acheson

Should Stephen Lawrence's killer be freed?

David Norris was convicted of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in April 1993 and now wants to be released from prison. Should he be? That is a question the Parole Board will consider as Norris has now served the minimum custodial term of a life sentence imposed in 2011. This body has the power to direct his release or refuse it on the grounds of risk to the public. While it is independent of politics, the profile of the perpetrator and the seriousness of the case means the new Justice Secretary, David Lammy – who has described the murder of Lawrence as a ‘seminal moment’ in shaping his understanding

Alexander Larman

Prince Harry’s white saviour complex has been dealt another blow

You’ve got to feel sorry for Prince Harry. After some of the best headlines he’s had in years during his well-received return to Britain last month, that goodwill has swiftly been dismantled under a blizzard of bad publicity. There was the accusation that he or someone around him leaked sensitive information about his brief meeting with his father to the papers. And now the revelation that one of the charities he’s closely linked to, African Parks, has been described as no longer fit for purpose. Or, to be exact, ‘indelicate and disrespectful’. The calamitous and scandalous collapse of Sentebale earlier this year has now been followed by this less dramatic

Luke Coppen

Islam and the Bible are fuelling France’s ‘baptism boom’

You have probably heard that something extraordinary is happening in the Catholic Church in France. The French bishops’ conference announced in April that more than 10,000 adults were due to be baptised in 2025 – a 45 per cent increase on the year before. France is seeing what the media call a ‘boom biblique’: a rapid rise in sales of the Bible It’s not just adult baptisms that are booming. A record 19,000 people, many young, attended this year’s Paris to Chartres pilgrimage. An unprecedented 13,500 high school students took part in the 2025 Lourdes FRAT pilgrimage, a major annual youth event. The country is also seeing what French media call a ‘boom biblique’: a rapid rise in

Tuesday

Ian Acheson

The ghost of October 7 haunts one Israeli kibbutz

A little over two months ago, I stood in the fallow murderscape of the Nir Oz kibbutz facing towards the barbed border fence with Gaza. Once, this village in southern Israel was a thriving community of 400 Jewish people, known for their left-wing ideologies and progressive ideals. But, two years ago on this very day, 500 Hamas terrorists smashed holes in the security wall, poured into Israel and stormed this quiet kibbutz. Nir Oz suffered the worst violence per capita of any village in the country that day, with a quarter of its population either slaughtered or taken hostage. Now only burned and looted cottages remain in this deserted memorial

Ross Clark

Lord Nelson wasn’t queer

After extensive research I can reveal that Adolf Hitler was not, in fact, gay. Nor was he black, transexual, secretly a woman or neurodiverse. He was, it turns out, a straight, white, cisgendered male. As for history’s good guys – now that is a different matter. The latest to be claimed as belonging to some kind of fashionable minority is Horatio Nelson who, according to a Liverpool art gallery, was queer. If activists want to go around trying to claim historic figures as their own, then fine. But I’m not sure why taxpayers should be funding this guff It makes this claim based on the nothing but the old chestnut of

Joanna Williams

Why do students think a bake sale is the way to mark October 7?

How best to commemorate the horrors of October 7th, 2023? How to mark the day on which hundreds of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, slaughtering almost 1,200 people, injuring thousands more, and taking 251 hostages? For students at the University of Liverpool, the answer seems to be a ‘bake sale’. That’s right. In remembrance of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, students will eat cake and raise money for Palestine. ‘Time for Dessert’ is the event’s sickening slogan. Protests are expected to take place today at universities throughout the UK Sadly, Liverpool is far from unique. Protests are expected to take place today at universities throughout the UK. Not demonstrations

Gareth Roberts

The sorry sight of the ageing protestor

Among the 488 arrests at the weekend at what the media is still pleased to call ‘pro-Palestine demonstrations’ were many, going by the video and photographic evidence, who were considerably beyond their first flush of youth. Grey hair and wrinkles abounded – one of the decrepit demonstrators was pictured dressed in a charming garment juxtaposing the Star of David with a swastika. As with many demos of late, the age of these miscreants is being held up by the movements in question as if to say ‘look how harmless they are’. I’m afraid for me it just brings to mind the saying that there’s no fool like an old fool.

Stephen Daisley

Immigration isn’t working

The Manchester synagogue attack requires us to ask three questions: where are we, how did we get there, and where now? Where we are is British Jews attacked on Yom Kippur, two dead, more injured, countless more afraid. This requires an acknowledgement by the governing classes that multiculturalism and mass immigration are false doctrines which have severely harmed this country and its people. Jihad al-Shamie is the latest in a grim roll call of first or second-generation immigrants to be welcomed to Britain only to repay that welcome with carnage. Instead of being taboo, the varying societal costs brought by different nationalities should inform the criteria for accepting migrants The

Julie Burchill

Islamists are the true cry bullies

When I invented the term ‘cry bully’ in this very magazine ten years ago, I had no idea how much bigger both theory and practice could get. It already seemed to have reached such a tipping point that surely ‘The Grown-ups in the Room’ of the time, or subsequently, would put a tin lid on such flagrant stupidity. I wrote, in part: This is the age of the cry bully, a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper. They are everywhere, these duplicit Pushmi-Pullyus of the personal and the political, from Celebrity Big Brother to the frontline of Islamism… Cry bullies do end up isolated, as their determination to

Angela Epstein

The case for staying put: why this Jew isn't leaving Britain

Is it time for the wandering Jews to once again pack up and go? It’s a question that has been troubling communities of the Diaspora – especially in this country – ever since the atrocities of October 7th unleashed, in the words of the Chief Rabbi, unrelenting waves of hatred against our people. How much more of a warning did we need? Sometimes we muse in the abstract. Idling around the Friday night dinner table over a fragrant bowl of chicken soup and wondering if this is the time for ‘the Exile’. At others, the tone hardens. Not least on strident Facebook feeds where the gathering storm clouds of prewar Germany are invoked

Philip Hensher

Jilly Cooper’s novels could well become classics

Dame Jilly Cooper, who has died at 88, had a remarkable career, turning herself from a sparkling writer for newspapers into the author of novels which survive, decades after they came out, very well. Few of the huge bestsellers of their day are read 40 years on – The Manxman, Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, Scruples all faded away. When one of Dame Jilly’s 1980s novels, Rivals, was filmed in 2024, it didn’t revive a forgotten favourite: like almost all her other novels, it had never disappeared from readers’ affections. Her books stand every chance of turning, in time, into classics of our literature. What makes the novels work

Alexander Larman

Has Taylor Swift lost it?

The Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant once remarked that every successful musician has what he called ‘an imperial phase’, during which they can apparently do no wrong. In the case of Taylor Swift, the most successful and famous musician on the planet, her imperial phase has lasted from 2012, when she released her breakthrough album Red, until now, when she gifted the world her latest record, The Life of a Showgirl. It’s 2025’s most anticipated and most hyped release, following her lengthy, world-conquering Eras tour, and handily comes off the back of her engagement to American football player Travis Kelce, who many of its songs are about. Some of Swift’s fans are making a valiant

Monday

Monica Porter

The generosity and graciousness of Jilly Cooper

Over many years as a journalist, writing for newspapers as well as authoring books, I’ve dealt with a sizeable number of celebs. And believe me, the majority are not exactly likeable. Well, no doubt their chums find them so, but their fame and money and ‘specialness’ tend to imbue them with haughtiness and self-importance, traits they bestow on those they regard as ‘the little people’. Their genial public personas are, I’ve often discovered, merely flimsy facades. The most shining exception to this general rule was Jilly Cooper, whose death at the age of 88 was just announced. I was deeply saddened to learn of it. We never met in person,

Robin Ashenden

Why the snobs were wrong about Jilly Cooper

Dame Jilly Cooper, who died today, finally achieved the acceptance that she’d always deserved. She wrote numerous volumes of witty, clear-sighted journalism, London-based romances like Prudence, Bella and Octavia – and, of course, her ‘Rutshire Chronicles’ series, set in the Cotswolds and featuring the wicked homme-fatale and aristo-sexbomb Rupert Campbell Black. They were books hoovered up as much by adults as by teenage girls and – though they hid the fact – often their younger brothers. There remained a widespread snobbery about her ‘bonkbuster’ novels – largely, perhaps, because they dealt mainly with the middle and upper classes Yet there remained a widespread snobbery about her ‘bonkbuster’ novels – largely, perhaps,

Chas Newkey-Burden

What's wrong with 'angry, middle-aged white men', Gary Neville?

Just when you thought we could all stop talking about flags, Gary Neville has arrived with his size ten boots to keep the ball in play. The ex-Man Utd footballer, turned property developer, said he removed a union flag from one of his Manchester sites because it was being ‘used in a negative fashion’. He also complained in a video message posted on social media that we’re being divided by ‘angry, middle-aged white men who know exactly what they’re doing’. I’m surprised it took Neville so long to wade in on flags because he’s always seemed up for a scrap. As a player, he wore his heart on his sleeve, goading

Stephen Pollard

Jews don't need Tommy Robinson

It is doubtless apocryphal, but it’s said that when Ernest Bevin heard someone say that Aneurin Bevan was his own worst enemy, he replied, ‘Not while I’m alive ‘e ain’t.’ Sometimes Israel behaves as if it is its own, and the diaspora’s, worst enemy That came into my mind when it emerged that the Israeli minister for Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli and Amir Ohana, the Speaker of the Knesset, have invited Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, more widely known as Tommy Robinson, to Israel. I am, as regular readers will know, a strong supporter of Israel. That’s not just because I am Jewish (although writing a history of Jewish migration, my latest book,

Gavin Mortimer

Sébastien Lecornu's exit is a humiliation for France – and for Macron

In a sensational development, Sébastien Lecornu has resigned as prime minister of France. His departure, after 27 days in office, makes the 39-year-old the shortest reigning premier of the Fifth Republic. Lecornu’s resignation is a humiliation for him, for France and for Emmanuel Macron. The president has now worked his way through seven prime ministers in eight years, a Fifth Republic record he shares with Francois Mitterrand. He, however, presided over France for fourteen years. The catalyst for Lecornu’s departure was the new government he unveiled on Sunday evening The catalyst for Lecornu’s departure was the new government he unveiled on Sunday evening. He has promised a ‘break’ with Macron’s

Lee Cohen

Britain's Jews must stay and fight

Britain once prided itself on being different from France, Belgium and Germany, where Jewish blood was repeatedly spilled on European streets. Now the same contagion has arrived in your green-but-less-pleasant-land. Britain was never free of prejudice, but unlike Europe, its anti-Semitism never captured a major party or defined the state – until our times. The Manchester attack was not merely an assault on Jews. It was an assault on Britain’s soul I write as an American of Jewish heritage, and a lifelong champion of Britain – the nation that turned liberty into law, and faith into citizenship. I write to offer a warning to Britain’s Jewish community: Don’t flee your

Sam Leith

We're all doomed if English literature students can't read books

The question has changed, as one Oxford don noted wanly on social media, from ‘What are you reading at university?’ to ‘Are you reading at university?’ Such is the state of undergraduates entering English literature courses these days, brains addled by scrolling on their mobile phones, that universities are now offering ‘reading resilience’ courses to help them tackle the unfamiliar task of reading long, old, sometimes difficult books. It’s a whole new cause of gloom to discover that even students who have actively signed up to study English literature at university are struggling to read books We’re accustomed, some of us, to feeling gloomy about the sinking popularity of Eng lit – once comfortably among the most popular choices at A-Level