Mary Wakefield

Feminism in modern Britain is not for the faint-hearted. Only the smartest, mouthiest girls on the social media scene dare join the fray — in print, in blogs, on Twitter — where they yell silently at each other in front of a mute but poisonous audience. It often seems not so much a fight for

How did ISIS, the blackest-hearted and most dangerous of Islamist groups take Iraq’s second city, Mosul, so easily? The lesson of their success in Raqqa province, Syria, is that they thrive on existing incompetence. In Syria the relative uselessness of the other rebel groups, especially any affiliated with the official Free Syrian Army, made ISIS

In my late thirties, I have become patriotic. It’s one of those things that’s happened with age, like cooking to freeze, plumping cushions and thinking policemen look too young. My heart stirs at the sound of a marching band and at the thought of great British inventions: the London sewer system, steam engines, float glass.

When Greg, my old uni pal, came to stay from NYC he brought with him an extra bag for his pills: vitamins A, B, C, D, zinc, magnesium, selenium, ginseng. They decamped to the kitchen, the pills, and stood in rows beside the kettle awaiting their morning ritual. They were bigger than British versions, I

I think the ancient English art of self–deprecation may be dying. I don’t mean self-deprecation in its distorted and most exported form: pug-eyed rogues like Hugh Grant getting away with murder — more usually infidelity — by grinning and rubbing their hair. That’s different. That’s ‘bogus self-deprecation’, as my friend Stuart Reid used to say.

Every night, while my husband reads by screen-light, my mind runs like an invisible rat two miles north to the house we’re rebuilding in Islington. And there it scurries from room to room, around the rotten skirting boards, up walls, into corners: testing, considering, fretting. Carpets or wooden boards? Which doorknobs, latches, hinges? Which white

A few days ago I went to a talk about Syria; one of those events for the concerned layman, in which a panel of experts give a briefing. Everything sounded depressingly familiar until expert number three piped up: I hear people blame Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the Islamists in Syria, he said, but in

Because I’d like to have a child, and I’m getting on a bit, my husband and I have spent time recently with consultants. They’re an odd breed with distinct and shared characteristics. Invariably, after we’ve all sat down, their first move is to tilt their chair back, or give it a little twirl (design permitting),

Amazon is testing unmanned drones to deliver goods to customers — whatever next? Well, the Spec can tell you exactly what. Last year we ran a cover story on drones, predicting that: ‘Quite soon, it will be impossible to ignore the fact that a revolution is taking place. You’ll look up one day and the skies