Nathaniel Hawthorne

My guide to thuggery

“Don’t they speak English?” asked my husband, tossing over a copy of the Daily Mail as though it were my fault. The headline read: “Missing in action.” It referred to Dan Jarvis disappearing from view in his new job as Defence Secretary. The headline writers should know that, militarily, those missing in action are presumed dead. The Mail meant AWOL – absent without leave. In 2024, I remarked how odd it was that Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, should say about mob violence outside a migrant hotel near Rotherham: “It is organized, violent thuggery.” Now Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is at it.

thuggery

Long live the New England horror story

There is a spot, about a twenty-minute drive from the New England town in which I grew up, where the devil is said to appear to hikers. It isn't known why he does this or if he's ever decent enough to bring a six-pack with him. But the legend is such that a high school friend of mine once refused to go there, presumably out of fear that she'd come back with a hex. That's New England for you, where growing up you assume that every town has its eerie old house and every county its howling boarded-up insane asylum. That diabolical trail is just one of countless spooky yarns native to the region, catalogued in collections of ghost stories you can buy in bookstores and airports.

new england