The Egyptian-born Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi was once invited to speak in this country — and the row which developed as a consequence was both entertaining and instructive. Many people said he shouldn’t be given a visa because of his ‘extremism’. Others, such as the mainstream UK Muslim organisations, insisted that this was a libellous
Theresa May has made it to the summer. In the aftermath of the election, Downing Street’s immediate aim was to get the Prime Minister to the parliamentary recess. On Thursday they succeeded. They think that the next six weeks will give the government a much-needed chance to regroup and catch its breath. Like a cricket
‘Brexit,’ says my friend David Aaronovitch, ‘is dying.’ We Remainer irreconcilables certainly hope so. But there’s a slim chance the grisly Brexit project could yet pull through, and it’s right to acknowledge this. So in a spirit of candid friendship I write this letter to die-hard Leavers, of whom a small — but vigorous —
We went to the first night of the Proms last week. Thinking it was all over, we left the auditorium just before Igor Levit came back on for a delayed encore in which he played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (transcribed by Liszt) as an anti-Brexit gesture. We loved Levit’s earlier rendering of a Beethoven piano
Now here’s a tricky question. The world’s largest oil company, potentially worth six times as much as ExxonMobil and ten times as much as Royal Dutch Shell, wants to list its shares on a major stock exchange next year, and has indicated that the choice is between London and New York. The company’s initial public
