Melanie McDonagh is an Irish journalist working in London.
There’s a good reason and a bad reason why David Cameron hasn’t added his mite to the argument about the reintroduction of grammars, which his Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, sounded off about yesterday. The good reason is that it would be the worst of form for the former Tory PM to diss his successor, even
Mother Theresa has been canonised today; cue for contained rapture on the part of her Missionaries of Charity and supporters in Rome and a rather different kind of satisfaction on the part of her critics, who now have a useful opportunity to air their objections to her work and cult. It’s hard to think of
It is fair to say that I am never one to take the Polly Toynbee approach to things – or indeed, that of this magazine’s cover article this week – that in the sunlit uplands of secular liberalism, Things Have Never Been Better. But some news strikes me with greater force than most as being proof
Today, Syrian rebels in Idlib shot down a Russian helicopter; five Russians were killed and footage from the site shows people dragging away at least one body, and not, I fancy, for Christian burial. The Russian defence ministry says that the crew had been engaged in humanitarian air drops in Aleppo, though I suppose there’s
On the bright side, the elderly priest who was murdered during mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen, had pretty well a perfect ending in Christian terms: celebrating the eucharist and targeted precisely because he was a priest. Two men took him hostage during mass, along with a couple of nuns and a couple of members of
Is it something to do with Theresa May’s departure as Home Secretary, or are the police completely losing it? The first extraordinary circumstance today is that police have advised Angela Eagle, until yesterday, a Labour leadership candidate, that she should no longer hold constituency surgeries – you know, that regular point of contact between MPs and
When I went to work at Foyle’s Bookshop as a student, when the owner Christina Foyle still ran the place, she would interview you and ask very kindly what your interests were: history, literature and cooking, you’d tell her. Then you’d find you’d been put at the cash till at some distance from all these
When Sadiq Khan was doing the rounds in his mayoral campaign he would, every so often, include some reference to his two daughters. He didn’t make a big deal of it; this wasn’t creepy or boastful in a Donald Trump way but the message was clear: he was an ordinary bloke and having a couple
Well! It hasn’t taken long for the commentariat to get over their excitement at the prospect of another female prime minster, has it? Can you imagine what the Guardian would be making of it were the contest between Angela and Maria Eagle, Venus and Serena Williams-style (or even, David and Ed Miliband-style)? It’d be triumph
Forget footwear. The most telling thing about Theresa May, as suggested in interview with Robert Peston, is her cookbook collection – she has 100. Her remarks about her cookery writer of choice was an extraordinary exercise in character signalling. ‘Delia is very precise,’ she said, ‘and I like a bit of… throw a bit here
Call it femocracy or gynocracy (my preference), or, a new age of women, as Justine Greening has it, the excited consensus is that we’re in for a benign new world of female governance. Hillary in the US, Theresa May over here, Ruth Davidson and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland, Angela Merkel in Germany…what could be more
Nick Clegg has written an interesting column for the Evening Standard today about the referendum result. You will not be surprised, reader, that he’s not altogether happy about the outcome. But what’s especially interesting is his insistence that: ‘…there will have to be a general election shortly after the new Conservative leader is elected. The
It does seem to me that there’s been a misunderstanding about what, exactly, a referendum is about. It’s not a general election. It’s not about electing a party with a manifesto. It’s simply getting an answer to a specific question, in this case, whether to stay in or leave the EU. So when disgruntled Remainers
The Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, was quick off the block to react to the referendum result – see his speech below. Having done his utmost to galvanise support among the Irish in Britain for Remain, with no discernible result (though Bob Geldof’s parallel efforts may have driven thousands to Brexit) he’s now getting to
Don’t know about you, but the healing process is proving difficult from my point of view in dealing with my friends and family. My daughter, who is 9, broke down and cried over breakfast when she heard the result. Which is nothing to what her class will do: to a child, they’re solidly pro-Remain, and
Just wondering: is there anyone out there who actually remembers supporting Turkish membership of the EU? Last night Sadiq Khan said the Brexit camp had been scaremongering with its ‘big fat lie’ that Turkey would join any time soon. (NB: Sadiq was a bit free with the ‘lie’ word; a generation ago, its use would
The Templeton Prize is known to lots of people from Richard Dawkins’ intemperate denunciation of it in The God Delusion in which it features as the unspeakable temptation for scientists to do business with the God lobby. But having been to the ceremony last night in which it was awarded to the former Chief Rabbi,
It’s not every day, you know, you get to see a bit of the elbow of Thomas a Becket. In fact, since 1538 when his bones were unceremoniously exhumed from their shrine at Canterbury, the chances have been pretty sparse. So if you haven’t been to catch up with that bit of the elbow which
Martin Stewart’s Riverkeep (Penguin, £7.99) has a list of books and writers on the cover: Moby-Dick, The Wizard of Oz, Ursula Le Guin, Charles Dickens and, less ambitiously, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman and Skellig. And, right in the middle, Riverkeep. Pff, you think: they wish! But you know what? Having read the book, there are
A retired diplomat I know had no doubt about where the blame lay for the Queen’s Very Rude episode. ‘Sounds as though the officials let her down badly – twice – in filming private conversations and then not vetting them,’ he observed acidly. And certainly it does seem as though the broadcasters’ cameraman at large
