A mighty slab of autobiography, self-adoring, self-promoting and self-published, has just appeared in the bookshops. It will sell few copies – nearly 800 name-dropping pages about the life of a moderately successful businessman is not an obvious bestseller – but it will receive pages of publicity in the press. The British media has a peculiarly… Continue reading Lewd but likeable: the key to Naim Attallah
Read morePerhaps more than its executives would care to admit, British mainstream television throbs with the thin-blooded pulse of nostalgia. Top Gear reminds viewers of a time when it was all right for minor public school types to talk about cars and make feeble jokes about women and foreigners. Once or twice a week, there will… Continue reading Why I’m not sold on ‘The Apprentice’
Read moreIt would seem a fairly obvious rule of public life that references to daily, intimate activities be kept to a minimum. If a book called Tales from the Smallest Room were published, it would do little for the reputations of those included. Evelyn Waugh died there, Joe Orton spent a lot of time there, Rula… Continue reading You’re on my roll of honour, Sheryl
Read moreThose who watched, with snooty incredulity, news footage of effigy-burning and riots on the Indian sub-continent during cricket’s World Cup would do well to take a glance at the reaction of English sports writers and bloggers to the elimination of our national team. Almost without exception, commentators have seemed unable to contain their fury and… Continue reading What is it that makes us such bad losers?
Read moreHow quaint that phrase “kiss and tell” is beginning to sound. It suddenly seems to belong to a lost age of polite euphemism, like “taking a liberty” or “no better than she should be”. When some knackered old court correspondent, churning out tedious speculation as part of the nationally embarrassing coverage of the latest royal… Continue reading Why it always pays to play yourself
Read moreIt has been a bumper month for A-list animal celebrities. Knut, Berlin Zoo’s famous polar bear cub, has made the front cover of Vanity Fair, posing in a faked-up photograph with Leonardo DiCaprio. According to that great style magazine, Knut is “a powerful (if not controversial) symbol of what the planet has to lose to… Continue reading Zoos are the last place to keep wild animals
Read moreWhen the shaggy libertarians of the love generation first pioneered the idea of the internet, they believed it would be an instrument for free expression, democracy and anarchy. Taking hippie values into the cybernetic age, it would bring the kind of freely shared, co-operative knowledge to be found in The Whole Earth Catalogue to anyone… Continue reading The web holds up a mirror to our cruelty
Read moreHow is your mindset today? At the start of a long weekend, with spring in the air, it will probably be in an acceptable state. If for some unhappy reason it is not, you will be reassured to know that there is an ever-increasing number of sincere people, concerned for the welfare of you and… Continue reading What a prim and prurient nation we’ve become
Read moreOn the track, a horse is on fire. A snow-white Lippizaner on a long rein, it makes its way slowly, trembling and wide-eyed, past the grandstand at Nad Al Sheba racecourse in Dubai. It is almost nine at night and, in the dark, the horse, with its entire hind-quarters aflame, makes an astonishing sight. Beyond… Continue reading Dubai, where they play for high stakes
Read moreWe live in a careless age. Only this week, a survey – yet another survey – has revealed that childhood has been lost. David Cameron has made a speech arguing that adults have lost authority over the young. In his new book Tokens of Trust, the Archbishop of Canterbury had identified a loss of trust… Continue reading Trust teenagers to make their choices
Read more
