Robin Ashenden is founder and ex-editor of the Central and Eastern European London Review. His detailed accounts of the media attacks on Lionel Shriver and Toby Young can be read on his substack ‘Letting the Child Run Riot’.
One advantage to being born in the 1970s was the sheer abundance of good kids’ TV on offer. This was the golden age between clunky black and white offerings like Muffin the Mule, and the creeping vapidity of later shows like Teletubbies or The Care Bears. It gave us Camberwick Green, The Magic Roundabout, Captain
Does anyone still talk about Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister who died 30 years ago today? Though the Labour party often seems keen to forget a leader who won – almost uniquely – four out of five elections, he was, perhaps more than anyone, the prime minister who ushered in the modern age. When
Current MPs in Britain seem, at times, a drab and depressing bunch. ‘The quality of parliamentarian,’ Ann Widdecombe said on a recent podcast, ‘is the lowest I can ever remember.’ It was not just the reluctance most sensible people feel about exposing themselves to such overwhelming and intrusive media focus, she explained, that was putting
To no one’s surprise, this week’s election results make miserable reading for the Tories, and the attacks on Kemi Badenoch have now begun. In an article in The Spectator, William Atkinson lambasts her as ‘an active barrier to the party’s saving itself,’ adding that she ‘had her chance to prove herself and has been found
Right beside the airport I often use to fly home from Italy, there is a pod hotel where I am becoming a regular client. These, as most will know, are dirt-cheap places where sleep is stripped down to its absolute core. For about £35 a night here, you get a tiny berth of a room
As the Birmingham binmen’s strike, full on since 11 March, grinds well into its second month, there is talk of similar action spreading nationwide. A crop of lurid headlines have been appearing in the press: ‘My Mercedes was destroyed by rats’, exclaims the Daily Telegraph, while the Daily Star announces that ‘Psycho seagulls and super rats
My first night in Turin, I thought of all the things I could be doing in this north Italian city, if I was there strictly for tourism. I could have gone to the Cathedral and seen a digital display of the Turin Shroud (the real thing is hidden away from prying eyes), or visited the
The government’s recent, palpable turn to the right seems to be gaining pace. In the past few weeks, Keir Starmer has slashed overseas aid, proposed a radical downsizing of the civil service, abolished NHS England and vowed to make serious cuts to welfare. As the Labour left pick up their weapons and prepare to do
Following the closure of Hungarian restaurant the Gay Hussar in 2018 – that Soho institution and virtual museum of Labour party history – it seems Londoners are about to lose another Central European landmark. The Polish restaurant Daquise has finally had time served on it by Transport for London, who wish to redevelop the buildings
Has there been a more cataclysmic year than 2025 for US-Europe relations? It started with US Vice President J.D. Vance’s ‘sermon’ to EU leaders at the Munich security conference last month – in which he berated Western Europe for its policies on immigration and free speech. The year so far has also taken in the
I’ve always been something of a news addict, but recent events in America and Ukraine have turned me into the kind of junkie films get made about. ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ an affliction you once sniggered at in others, is now sweeping the world faster than Covid-19, and is oddly easy, at the moment, to fall
A consensus seems to be forming, in certain quarters, that the debacle at the White House meeting on Friday – which played out before an incredulous world – was in large part Volodymyr Zelensky’s fault. Ukraine’s president is certainly paying a heavy price: overnight, Donald Trump has halted military aid to Ukraine. “We are pausing
Is Britain going back to the 1970s? Even under the Conservatives in 2022, the Financial Times was warning we were in danger of reliving that ‘relentlessly awful decade’. Since Starmer’s accession to power, the similarities have become only clearer. Millionaire hotelier Rocco Forte drew the same comparison in the autumn, saying we’d ‘come full
The comic writer George Mikes, who died nearly 40 years ago, knew he had made it when he received a fan letter one day from Albert Einstein. Mikes, the scientist said to him, was blessed with ‘radiant humour… Everyone must laugh with you, even those who are hit with your little arrows.’ Chief among Mikes’s
Those whose mouths have been left hanging open by Donald Trump’s pivot towards Russia in the past fortnight, and the ruthlessness with which the Ukrainians (and Europe) have been thrust off the stage, haven’t been paying attention. The love-in between the two leaders has been going on now for a decade. It started properly in
The news that WHSmith is facing closure seemed inevitable. Good stationery may be one of the pleasures of life, but is anyone actually buying much any more? Of course, people will always need pens, string, bubble wrap and so on, yet the heyday of stationery has definitely passed. There was a time, when people still
Things are currently looking choppy for Kemi Badenoch. Polls last weekend were bad enough, seven of them showing Reform leading the Conservatives by a point. But now it seems this gap may have widened dramatically. A poll on Thursday showed Reform pushing the Tories in to third place, with Farage’s party on 25 per cent
Monopoli, Puglia Monopoli is an elegant little seaside town in Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot, and in summer it’s unbearable. Tourists flock from everywhere. Squares you could normally zip through in a few seconds take ten minutes to cross, and the queues for Bella Blu, the ice cream parlour in Piazza Garibaldi, remind
As Holocaust Remembrance Day comes round again, actual remembrance of the Holocaust seems fainter than ever. The arson attacks on synagogues in France and Australia, the mass-assault on Israeli football supporters in Holland last autumn, or the shocking recent scenes at the Oxford Union, where Jewish speakers were taunted, booed and sworn at by the
Will we ever tire of the Cambridge spies? Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Burgess and Maclean – and to a lesser extent John Caincross, the fifth man in the circle – are names as familiar to us now as certain brands of detergent or the line-up of the Beatles. To compliment the countless books, dramas and
