Society

Feminists will be lining up to prevent the appointment of the Catholic mother of seven.

At 7 p.m., panting, I knocked on the door of room 201 of the Hotel InterContinental, Marseille, expecting it to be opened by Patrick Woodroffe, the man who has splendidly lit Rolling Stones gigs for the past 33 years, who would, I believed, hand over two tickets. With any luck, and on the strength of our slender acquaintance, I hoped these tickets would be upgraded to seats a little closer to the action than the ones we had paid quite enough for. Eventually, the door was opened instead by a timid woman wearing a hijab. She blinked at the words ‘Rolling Stones’ but they meant nothing to her. We ran

Anxious to find out what food they served at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, I clicked on the relevant site and was transported immediately to a discount motorcycle website entirely in Korean, or Japanese, or maybe Chinese. I don’t know — I can’t tell the difference between those respective hieroglyphics. Maybe that was the point: the restaurant was weeding out people like me who have never bothered to distinguish between different oriental alphabets and are therefore racist and banned from the Red Hen, probably for life. More likely, though, is that the site has been hacked by clever and jubilant Trump supporters. The Red Hen is where the

I write this on my last day in the Bagel, and it sure is a scorcher, heat and humidity so high that the professional beggars on Fifth Avenue have moved closer to the lakes in Central Park. Heat usually calms the passions, but nowadays groupthink pundits are so busy presenting fake news as journalism you’d think this was election week in November. Here’s one jerk in the New York Times: ‘The court’s decision was narrow…’ The decision in question is the Supreme Court ruling that a baker could refuse a gay couple’s request for a cake on religious grounds. The writer who described the result as narrow, one Adam Liptak

In an interview with Reuters, the supreme pontiff uses Trumpian rhetoric to criticize the migrant children scandal.

The provinces of the Anglican Communion today have little in common beyond a historical connection to the Church of England.

You can tell when Donald Trump has just achieved something: he starts being strangely amiable, and his critics start frothing at the mouth. He’s just met supposedly one of the most dangerous, evil men in the world — and made him look like a sweet overgrown child. He and Kim Jong-un signed an agreement and all the rolling news anchors talking about how ‘historic’ it is are for once not exaggerating. ‘Today, we had a historic meeting and decided to leave the past behind and we are about to sign the historic document,’ Kim said. ‘The world will see a major change.’ He also thanked Trump for the summit. ‘We’re

New York This week 50 years ago saw the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a man I met a couple of times in the presence of Aristotle Onassis, whom some Brit clown-writer once dubbed Bobby’s murderer. (Bad books need to sell, and what better hook than a conspiracy theory implicating a totally innocent man?) I once witnessed Bobby, at a Susan Stein party, asking Onassis for funds — the 1968 election was coming up — and Ari showing Bobby his two empty trouser pockets. Bobby’s assassination did alter American politics. Violence, black anger and despair spilled out on to the streets of American cities. His death caused far more grief among

By 74 it is easy to feel that you have seen it all, done it all, that nothing much surprises you any more. Striving gives way to coping. Drop a pencil and it rolls under the sofa. What you have to do is think about the best way to find it and pick it up. Problem. Do you get down on your knees and reach in under, which of course means you will have to get up again, or do you simply push the sofa away? Such problems don’t really bother you. You cope with it. You don’t reflect on growing decrepitude. It has been so slow coming, you have

The film awards season is over and Cannes has been handed back to wealthy holiday-makers, yet the #MeToo movement shows no signs of slowing down. Morgan Freeman is the most recent addition to the ignominious list of film producers, directors and actors who have had accusations of sexual harassment made against them since #MeToo took off in October last year. Allegations against the 80 year-old Freeman, star of The Shawshank Redemption, emerged last week on the day before Harvey Weinstein handed himself into police in New York on charges of rape. The charges against Weinstein are serious; he should stand trial and, if found guilty, face a lengthy prison sentence. Yet the #MeToo label puts

If the BBC really is, as Steve Bannon says, a communications department of the global elite, they messed up badly last night. Emily Maitlis’s 20-minute long interview with Bannon on Newsnight was mesmerising television — even, or especially, if you can’t bear the subject. It was also the longest advertisement for economic nationalism yet delivered to British viewers. No doubt Raheem Kassam, the close Bannon associate who’s just left Breitbart and has been on Newsnight a few times himself, had something to do with it.By airing the discussion, the Beeb disproves the Bannonite idea that it is part of an elite conspiracy to silence populist points of view on immigration.