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Funny what rises from the rubble. In 1916 British army officer Captain Fred Roberts was searching the bombed-out remains of Ypres. Among the ruins was a printing press. Soon words and sentences were flying from the old machine — cheeky, irreverent, bold. It was brazen of Roberts to start a satirical newspaper right on the
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I am in a yurt, talking about death. Everyone is seated in a circle, and I am the next-to-last person to share. The last of the summer sun is shining through the entrance. At one end is a display coffin of biodegradable willow — there’s also tea and coffee, and coffin-shaped biscuits with skeleton-shaped icing.
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I’m not crazy about cookery shows. I suspect they indicate how little we are cooking, rather than how much. We’re fascinated with celebrity chefs because we think they’ve mastered something exotic and foreign to us — no surprise their shows are often slotted next to travel programmes. Looking at Jamie Oliver potter about his kitchen,
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Ever since the Arab Spring sprang its bright new dawn, the old regimes of the Middle East — along with their economies — have fallen like dominoes. But one authoritarian regime, at least, stands taller than ever: Saudi Arabia. Its shimmery skyline, its modern minarets, all testify to the infallibility of petroleum-rich power. Yet there’s
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The Spectator, as it does every year, is offering you good money to write about your travels. What’s more, our £2,000 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize — named after the late Trinidad-born writer and brother of VS Naipaul — is not awarded for travel writing in the conventional sense. You need not have gone anywhere highly
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How did our comedies become so sad? BBC1’s new sitcom Big School (Fridays) opened with a scene that would probably tickle the ribs of many, but I, in my usual humourless way, found it depressing. Chemistry teacher Mr Church, played by David Walliams, hoped to excite his morbidly uninterested pupils about the effects of dunking
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I’m in two minds about blogging this post. On the one hand, I’d really rather be on a sunny beach somewhere, reading a good old-fashioned book or staring at the blue horizon. On the other hand, I really, really want to publicise my Spectator cover story about summer and our addiction to technology (it’s fab!).
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I was sitting on some rocks by the Cornish coast when a teenager swanned by on the sun-warmed boardwalk in front of me. The boy stood on the burning deck, preparing to dash across the sand, dive. Then his phone rang. ‘Luce! Yes, I’m at the sea… Was just going to plunge… Ran back to
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I watched Top Gear (BBC2, Sunday) for the first time in my life last week (the rock under which I’ve been living is pretty large, practically a boulder). I thought I’d better plug this knowledge gap before it got too embarrassing, seeing that Top Gear is the greatest show on earth, the travelling Big Top
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I sincerely hope you’re not watching television. With the glorious summer sun we’re having, you should be having picnics and swims, not sitting in front of a screen. So this is my recommended viewing for the week: nothing. Get out. Still, if you must look for something, why not look for shows about looking? There
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Luther is back, in Luther, and so is Donny Osmond, of Donny & Marie fame. Could there be two more differing cultural symbols of manhood? My feeling is no. Luther (Tuesdays, BBC1) fills our screens with sick foreboding. We are as victims pinned to the sofa, eyeballing the characters’ every action with terror as they
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Channel 4 is deep into its summer of love. It’s having a Mating Season and — unusually for the network — it’s not all about sex. Instead, it’s about those fluttery butterflies that occur before the birds and the bees come in, when two people meet for the first time and get to know each
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The Tudors have invaded television. Everywhere you look, it’s Henry VIII this, Henry VII that, Anne Boleyn this, Anne of Cleves that. On BBC2 is the continuing drama series The Tudors, whose Henry VIII looks like the lead singer in a boy band who’s stumbled on to the wrong film set. At any moment, you
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It’s not going to be a popular rallying cry, I admit. Somehow ‘Save the Bankers’ doesn’t quite pull at the heartstrings in the same way as ‘Save the Whales’ or ‘Save the Pandas’. Yet the news comes to us today that UK banks will have slashed nearly 190,000 jobs worldwide by the end of next
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I like bankers. They’re an honest lot. All of us like money, but only they are upfront about it. I once witnessed a conversation between three financiers that started with them comparing their cars, then their houses, then their helicopters. None of the shilly-shallying you find at a society cocktail party, where people slyly suss
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Excelliarmus! Why do East Asian children feel they can relate to Harry Potter? Because he wears glasses, like so many of them do. The fascination with British wizarding students extends to British schools, and it’s safe to say that many Asian youngsters, not to mention their parents, picture the ideal institution of learning as being
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I like to tease my friend Wei about being a tiger mother. She once told me of an incident where her daughter Shu was making an artwork for a friend as a birthday present. Shu doodled for a few minutes, then showed her mother a sketch of a funny face. ‘I told her to knuckle
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Forget The Apprentice. A ‘reality TV’ show where you have no say, and where you can only watch as Sir Alan Sugar does all the hiring and firing? That is so last decade. Forget, too, quaint programmes such as The X Factor, where you pick the contestants you like and the ones you don’t —
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François Hollande has just completed his visit to China. The two great socialist nations more or less embraced: ‘I look forward to… working with you to make our relationship closer, healthier and more vibrant,’ said Chinese president Xi Jinping. ‘When China and France agree on a position, we can drive the world,’ Hollande cooed back. Both
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There are two American Dreams — the one that happens in real life and is experienced by people such as Barack Obama, and the one that happens on screens, both silver and small, shared by millions across the world. BBC2’s The United States of Television: America in Primetime (Saturday) traces the history of the latter,
