It is a wonderful joke. It is folk art, like maypoles and cheese-rolling. It is a celebration of our history. It fuses the art of Magritte with that of the great 18th century painter George Stubbs. It is a patriotic...
Read moreWhile an increasingly futile debate surrounding the relative offensiveness of Carol Thatcher, Jo Brand, gollywogs and Jeremy Clarkson has rumbled on, the BBC has unfussily been showing how good public broadcasting can be on its fourth channel. Following the excellently...
Read moreIt must be something of a nightmare for a well-known public figure – Stephen Fry, say – to be trapped in a lift with five other people, and then to find his discomfort broadcast minute by minute to thousands of...
Read moreOne would think, in these money-obsessed times, that there would be a more consistent attitude to financial greed and its relationship to morality and happiness. Instead, a weird double- standard has taken hold. Bankers, it is agreed, have been foolish...
Read moreJohn Updike once wrote that a person's collection of books comes to symbolise the contents of his mind. "Books preserve, daintily, the redolence of their first reading – this beach, that apartment, that attack of croup. This flight to Indonesia."...
Read moreIt has already been a year of surprises, not all of them unpleasant. A world leader has dared to tell his people that it is time for them to grow up. Bankers have suddenly developed an interest in socialism. The...
Read moreWhat, at the end of one of the most momentous weeks in modern history, will dominate the news this weekend? The progress of the first black president of the United States? The meltdown in our banking system? Almost certainly both...
Read moreWhen it comes to the age-old question of men and women, their relative strengths and weaknesses, a strange species of madness seems to have recently taken hold. Everywhere, not only in the media but also in academic and political life,...
Read moreThe opening of Australia across Australia was quite an event. At local cinemas, there were premieres for Baz Luhrmann's film, with red carpets and audiences of A-list dignitaries from the area. Despite an undeserved mauling by the Australian critics, it...
Read moreWhat word would you use to capture the mood of the country as 2008 draws to a close? Crunch? Crisis? Corrupt? Sachsgate? Each of these is rather too specific. Perhaps the most telling verbal tag to attach to the spirit...
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