Melanie McDonagh

Melanie McDonagh

Melanie McDonagh is an Irish journalist working in London.

Faith schools are more diverse than their critics make out

Ever willing to exploit my children, I asked them yesterday just how many actual English children there were in their class at school – one’s at primary, the other, secondary. What, English-English, they said reasonably? You mean, both parents, plus born here? Yes, I said, which meant they couldn’t count themselves – they were born

Justine Greening’s departure is no great loss

You could, I suppose, feel sorry for Justine Greening if you were a nicer person than me, not just for losing her job, but for being in the job after it had been occupied by Michael Gove. Mr Gove had the radical, indeed revolutionary perception that it was a scandal that there should be such

Keep Christmas going through January, for God’s sake

Is there anything more evil than Dry January as an unchristian abomination and a conspiracy against Baby Jesus?  Unless it’s Veganuary. It’s part, you know, of the war against Christmas and indeed against a sane approach to the seasons. Look around you, folks: this is a bleak month if you cut out decorations, tinsel, candlelight,

Lines of beauty | 7 December 2017

The thing about Winnie-the-Pooh, 91 years old this year, is that he’s the creature of E.H. Shepard, who drew him, quite as much as he is of A.A. Milne, who created him. The words and the pictures came together for anyone who encountered Pooh Bear in the books rather than the film. Any exhibition about

Damian Green’s private life is not a police matter

So, a former Met detective, Neil Lewis, professes himself ‘shocked’ – yes ‘shocked’ – by the amount of pornography allegedly found on the computer of the Deputy Prime Minister, Damian Green, in 2008. He had analysed the way the computer in question had been used and declared he had ‘no doubt whatever’ that it was

The trouble with Miss Markle

‘The thing is,’ said my friend, after the broadcast of the engagement interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, ‘you can’t imagine actually bowing or curtseying to her, can you?’ That is pretty well the crux of the engagement issue: can you see yourself doing either in the case of the newest prospective member of

Melanie McDonagh

Cat among the pigeons

Back in 1990, Roald Dahl wrote a book called The Minpins, which was illustrated by Patrick Benson, a very good artist. By now we regard Dahl (when writing for children) to be inescapably linked with Quentin Blake, to the point where any other combination seems fundamentally unsatisfactory, like trying to decouple Goscinny and Uderzo in

Dark side of the Moomins

Tove Jansson, according to her niece’s husband, was a squirt in size and could rarely be persuaded to eat, preferring instead to smoke fags and drink whisky. And when she did eat, it was usually salted cucumbers — to go with the drink. You know, this late in life, I may have encountered my role

The problem with the Church of England’s gender guidance

There has been an equivocal reaction, wouldn’t you say, to the Church of England’s pronouncement that little boys should be allowed to wear tiaras and high heels at school, while issuing a helpful form to encourage teachers to report transgender bullying; the new rules, it says, are designed to ‘challenge homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying’;

May’s day

You may think you don’t know May Morris, daughter of William, but you’ll probably have come across her wallpaper. Her honeysuckle design was and remains a Morris & Co. bestseller, and it not only features in homes to this day, it’s been nicked by designer Jonathan Anderson for a Morris-inspired range for the very expensive

Pregnant silence

Brian Sewell once wrote an article about abortion headlined: ‘Women, the killers in our midst.’ He got an awful lot of flak for it, which he took in his stride. He came to mind during the screening of Abortion On Trial, the documentary hosted by Anne Robinson and screened this week to mark the 50th

Melanie McDonagh

Three daemons in a boat

Philip Pullman’s new k, the prequel to his Northern Lights series — the one north Oxford academics very much prefer to Harry Potter — is an intriguing work. It’s notionally set some time near our own, but the world it evokes is the 1950s and 1960s England of the author’s youth. The hero, Malcolm Polstead,

Women-only colleges were the original ‘safe space’

My old college, formerly known as New Hall, is women-only for its undergraduates. But now the term is expanding, as so often these days, to include anyone who, at the time of application, ‘identifies as female’, as well as the non-binary, those who really can’t make up their minds. During my time in college, I