Mind games
Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall enjoys the dubious status of a modern classic. A black mental-health patient, Christopher, is about to be freed from a clinic but his cautious young shrink, Bruce, wants to...
View ArticleBaby with the bathwater
Bustle, an online newspaper ‘for and by women’, has published ‘six common phrases you didn’t know were sexist (that you’ll now want to ban from your vocabulary)’. One of them is ‘Don’t throw the baby...
View ArticleDear Mary
Q. Every summer, just when England is at its loveliest, we have to pack everything up and make a stressy journey to go and stay with someone who has a house abroad. I can understand people wanting to...
View ArticleThe alt-right isn’t all wrong
I got told off this week by a presenter on BBC radio for using a four-letter word live on air. In my defence, I was merely quoting a tweet from a black Hollywood comedy star called Leslie Jones which...
View ArticleDiary
To Edinburgh for the book festival, where I am to explain Fools, Frauds and Firebrands to respectable middle-class Scots, who have an endearing way of suggesting to me that I, like them, am a thing of...
View ArticleMind games
BLUE ORANGE by Penall, , Writer - Joe Penal, Director - Mathew Xia, Design - Jeremy Herbert, Lighting - Adam Silverman, The Young Vic Theatre, 2016, London, UK, Credit: Johan Persson/
View ArticleBaby with the bathwater
Bustle, an online newspaper ‘for and by women’, has published ‘six common phrases you didn’t know were sexist (that you’ll…
View ArticleDear Mary
Q. Every summer, just when England is at its loveliest, we have to pack everything up and make a stressy…
View ArticleThe alt-right isn’t all wrong
HOLLYWOOD, CA - JULY 09: Actress Leslie Jones arrives at the Premiere of Sony Pictures''Ghostbusters' at TCL Chinese Theatre on July 9, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E....
View ArticleDiary
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - NOVEMBER 6: Queen Elizabeth II smiles as she arrives before the Opening of the Flanders' Fields Memorial Garden at Wellington Barracks on November 6, 2014 in London, England....
View ArticleHigh life
NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 05: Actor Damian Lewis attends the Paley Live: Sneak peek at "Billions" Season Two, plus discussion at Paley Center For Media on December 5, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by...
View ArticleStupidity takes hold of another students’ union
I had never heard the acronym Soas before I started work at the BBC, almost 30 years ago. But as…
View ArticleA Berlin Wall moment for political correctness
Because we’re all so obsessed with what it was that made the Nazis tick, we tend to overlook the bigger…
View ArticleFor a real Oxbridge education, go to Durham
‘Should I just have done with it and tell them they’re a bunch of tossers?’ I was on my way…
View ArticleThe mad, bad war on ‘cultural appropriation’
It’s usually best to ignore the indignant fury of the 21st-century young. We’re used to them now, these snowflakes, posing…
View ArticleHigh life
TOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump (C) receives the Order of Abdulaziz al-Saud medal from Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (R) at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh on May 20, 2017. / AFP...
View ArticleNational Army Museum
I used to love the National Army Museum in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, which was crammed with the memorabilia of…
View ArticleMea cuppa
On the street where I grew up there was an old man who was sweet, friendly… and racist. This was…
View ArticleDon’t like our diversity agenda? You’re fired
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - SEPTEMBER 02: The new Google logo is displayed at the Google headquarters on September 2, 2015 in Mountain View, California. Google has made the most dramatic change to their logo...
View ArticleHigh life
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870- 1924), the Russian Dictator standing and addressing a crowd. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
View Article