Features

Take back control

Brexit was a mutiny. Like all mutinies, it was driven by anger at authority rather than by a strategy for the future. To date, the consequences have been to deepen polarisation, but triumphant victory for either side is not the way forward. That there is no majority for any of the current options is entirely

Laura Freeman

Clucking hell

‘Last fling before the ring.’ ‘Buy me a shot, I’m tying the knot.’ ‘Keep calm and bridesmaid on.’ If you find yourself on a train to Brighton, Paris or Amsterdam with a group of women in T-shirts bearing the above slogans, change carriages. You are about to witness Jen’s hen in full prosecco-and-Pringles feather. On

The hypocrisy of Jeff Bezos

It is tempting to view the blow-up between Amazon’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos and David Pecker, publisher of the tabloid National Enquirer, with the peculiar glee some journalists experience when they cover a natural disaster: it can be exciting, fun even, to sit back and observe the flames. As political earthquakes go, the Bezos-Pecker face-off

Blues and the royals

Over the centuries, the British royal family have been many things: conquerors, vanquishers, tyrants and buffoons. They have been denied their destiny, gone mad with grief, been exalted and even exiled. They have been beheaded, beholden, belligerent and benevolent, but until now they have never really been victims. And certainly not self-identifying victims. Yet the

Under cover of darkness

It was World Hijab Day earlier this month. You probably missed it, but you can imagine the idea: ‘global citizens’ of all faiths and backgrounds were asked to cover their heads for a day ‘in solidarity with Muslim women worldwide’. It is done in ‘recognition of millions of Muslim women who choose to wear the

Europe’s culture clash

Two weeks ago Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s vice-premier and Labour Minister and the top politician of the Five Star Movement (M5S), appointed a new commissioner for the UN cultural organisation Unesco. He chose the dog–whistling, bum-slapping sex–comedy actor Lino Banfi, star of How to Seduce Your Teacher, Policewoman on the Porno Squad and other films.

Bad romance | 7 February 2019

I interviewed a prominent 1970s women’s liberationist recently and ended up discussing the sexual culture of her political heyday. ‘Everyone was sleeping with everyone,’ she said. ‘You had to have a good reason not to sleep with someone.’ I felt a stab of envy, a sharpened version of what I feel browsing black-and-white snaps from

Ross Clark

Carmageddon

When Nissan announced it would not, after all, produce its new X-Trail in Sunderland, this was reported as proof of an impending Brexit disaster. A Labour councillor in South Wales even suggested that ‘all those who voted to leave should be laid off first’. But Nissan’s decision has little to do with Brexit, and everything

Hold your horses

‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ asked the lady as she sat beside me in the caravan. The old farmer, a horse dealer, sat on another seat looking stunned. ‘You look exhausted,’ she said. I was. I’d driven hundreds of miles looking for horses I had seen seized from the horse dealer’s farm.

The wrong track | 7 February 2019

No one is in any doubt about the problem facing Britain’s railways. Over the past decade, rail fares have risen twice as fast as salaries. Yet across the national network, overcrowding is at record levels, cancellations are spiralling and passenger dissatisfaction is at a ten-year high. Yet ministers are about to start pouring £4.5 billion

Mary Wakefield

The edge of reason

My husband, usually a cool customer, watched Free Solo from behind his fingers, sometimes jumping up from the sofa and backing away from the TV. Audiences at Imax showings have behaved the same way, rising to their feet, clenching their sweaty fists as they watch  Alex Honnold, a 33-year-old rock climber from Sacramento, make his

Life after death | 31 January 2019

I’ve talked to Denise Horvath-Allan more than my own mother this year. Denise’s son Charles went missing while backpacking in Canada. I see his face — never ageing, entombed within his early twenties — every day on Facebook. Denise’s posts are more desperate each time I see them. Charles disappeared in 1989, on the eve

James Forsyth

May’s final mission

Theresa May will soon arrive in Brussels with a series of unlikely demands. She must tell the European Union that she wants to re-open a deal that she was hailing as not just the best, but the ‘only deal possible’ a few weeks ago. Parliament has now made her eat her words. It is a

Europe’s blind spot

In Paris in December, I sat with a journalist friend in a café on the Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui and listened to him explain to me why a no-deal Brexit would be a catastrophe for Britain. It had to do with an article his newspaper had published about the Mini. You might think they were typically British

Drunken confessions

I have always found the parable of the Prodigal Son sickeningly unfair, and I felt this again while driving a close relative down a motorway in a frightful gale at night to a residential rehab. -That morning I’d had an emergency consultation in London on behalf of the said relative, with the head of the

Old flame

It was a close-run thing for my friend who’s having a new kitchen installed in her house in Chiswick. After a persuasive campaign by her eloquent architect, who has an induction hob in his own house and loves it for its clean lines and hyper-efficiency, she had got as far as ordering one for herself.

Judge not

When I was called to the Bar in 1967, the aim was to be appointed as a judge to the High Court. It was the destination to which all ambitious barristers not only should but would aspire. The job offered security, the conventional knighthood, an avenue to public service and a modicum of public power.