Opinion

Does what we know about its creators’ mental health overshadow the brilliance of The Goon Show? Can the all-too-familiar concept of the sad clown spoil the enduring charms of one of British comedy’s enduring monuments? It is a question worth asking this month, on the 70th anniversary of the first UK broadcast of radio comedy The Goon […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how English, having spread one way around the world, suddenly reversed direction During the 1600s and 1700s, the English language spread westwards from Britain across the Atlantic to Canada, the USA, Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, and Central America. Then, suddenly, at the very end of the 18th century, it started spreading back […]

Politics has changed and one reader says Labour loyalists must stop looking to the past. The problem facing Keir Starmer is simple to state but immensely difficult to solve.  It is one that has been with us for a very long time. After two decades working in the coal industry, I became a writer and researcher. […]

France has always prided itself on its great thinkers. But the current crop are embarrassing and increasingly irrelevant. What happened? There must be some lesson to be drawn from the fact that today’s woke crowd insults France and the French while name-dropping French totems from a great height. As the country is repeatedly condemned, Merleau-Ponty, […]

Jason Solomons has known Noel Clarke for 15 years and admired his refusal to be denied by the British film industry. But that was before the allegations that have left his career, and BAFTA’s reputation, in tatters… Whichever way you look at it, the Noel Clarke allegations are disastrous for British cinema.  It’s a story […]

Sergei Krikalev went into space as a citizen of the USSR. While he was away, his country ceased to exist and he was left stranded in orbit. On its 30th anniversary, MICK O’HARE tells the astonishing story of his flight. On 19 August 1991 Boris Yeltsin, newly elected president of the Russian Soviet Republic, stood […]

An honest referendum about the future of the UK and EU seems a long way off after the latest election results The results suggest that the UK is beyond redemption. How people can see past the lies, and continue to support the Tories is truly astonishing. It really doesn’t bode well for the years ahead. […]

The breakdown of talks with Norway over fisheries signifies another broken Brexit pledge.

An intriguing new exhibition allows the public to view paintings from the Golden Age of Dutch art while experiencing the smells associated with them.  A painting is a painting is a painting. You look at it. It might mesmerise you; Jackson Pollock. Make you smile ironically; Rene Magritte. Lift your soul to the heavens; Tiepolo or, a Damien […]

Financial scandals are never fatal for PMs, but they do lasting damage There is a familiar sequence. Another allegation about the misconduct of Boris Johnson erupts on the front pages. Those that despair of Johnson’s leadership say to themselves or aloud that “surely this one will get him”. A poll is published a day later […]

If a picture is worth a thousand words – and if you need that picture to assuage the feeling that football is being sold to the devil – study this photograph. The scene is Wembley Stadium last Sunday evening. Moments after the final whistle of this season’s first cup final, Tottenham’s defeated Son Heung-min is […]

Politicians are badly letting down the electorate, and more than ever we need a coherent opposition. UK politics has failed us badly and the people know it. But opposition politicians have swallowed the Brexit pill and say we are in a long game. Labour’s loss in Hartlepool shows that our political landscape needs restorative action […]

The results in Scotland and Wales shows voters turned their backs on Boris Johnson, so why not in England? Why can so many English people not see through Boris Johnson? The Scots and Welsh clearly can – it was as heartening to see the election results north and west of Little England as it was […]

It would be little surprise if Boris Johnson turned out to be the ‘chatty rat’ the leak inquiry has yet to identify. Anyone who knows me also knows that I have something of an addiction to my phone. Nor is this a new thing. As far back as 1997, journalist John Williams, who was with […]

The electorate may still view Boris Johnson favourably, but the prime minister may not get the same reception internationally. Current reporting would suggest that a large proportion of the electorate is not too concerned about Boris Johnson’s competence or character, as long as they believe that the country is being tolerably well run – vaccination […]

TANIT KOCH on how the quest for equality is having an impact on the German language. Some of us have put lockdown to great use and improved our language skills at home. Some, like editor-at-large Alastair Campbell, have even chosen German, despite the lasting damage done to its reputation by Mark Twain (The Awful German Language), Hollywood (“Achtung! Schnell, […]

There are few European leaders more colourful and controversial than Bulgaria’s Boyko Borisov. Now, demographic forces unleashed by the pandemic could topple him and offer a new start for the EU’s poorest nation The beginning of the end for Bulgaria’s bruising former bodyguard turned prime minister Boyko Borisov came last summer, when a photo surfaced showing […]

There is a strong case for Britain to spend more on international aid, based purely on self interest… yet even that cannot convince the government Last month saw an announcement that could be UK’s most positive impact on the world in decades – a new vaccine, not to tackle Covid-19, but malaria. A team from the University […]

Geoff McDonald recently flew into the UK from South Africa. What he found was chaos, and conditions that seemed ripe for super-spreading Though I was born and raised in South Africa, Britain has been my home for more than 20 years. I have raised a family here, come to know the UK as a wonderful and […]

The Civil Service has been weakened by Brexit and the growth of court politics. But a rearguard action is underway. Plucked from relative obscurity at the age of 41 to become cabinet secretary, Simon Case could hardly have imagined his present role as head of the Downing Street shovel brigade, clearing up mess largely of […]

The prime minister and his fiancee have got it badly wrong over their reported disdain for John Lewis. On contemplating the national orgy of curtain-twitching that’s accompanied Dominic Cummings’s revelations regarding the refurbishment of the prime minister’s flat in Number 11, Downing Street, Oscar Wilde’s valedictory bon mot comes to mind: days before expiring in […]

Italy’s Robinson Crusoe says he is “really pissed off” being forced off the idyllic island he has spent 30 years living on alone. Mauro Morandi, now 81, landed on the pink sand atoll of Budelli in 1989 while attempting to sail to Polynesia with friends. He has remained ever since, even after his sole companion […]

As Northern Ireland passes a low-key landmark, Irish author and journalist MATT COOPER sees signs that the 100-year-old country is moving away from the tribal scars of its past, even if that complicates its future One hundred years on from the political partition of the island of Ireland and a Northern Irish identity seemingly is taking hold at last among […]

Britain is facing a post-Brexit “exodus of EU waiters and baristas” with “prospective foreign workers are shunning the UK because of tighter visa rules and higher entry costs post-Brexit.” It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, as reaction to the Line Of Duty finale reminds us of another long-running […]

Amid the turmoil in the DUP is a deeper question for unionists… should they retrench into hard-line ‘Ulster Says No’ politics or seek a recalibration? Wet flags flapping against telegraph poles under dark skies amid tentative post-lockdown re-openings of retail sectors on a stormy Bank Holiday Monday in Northern Ireland seemed an appropriate backdrop to yet […]

The European football super league is not dead – and you can bank on that The Super League, which rightly shocked and angered so many, came as no surprise to me. It was always hovering in the wings, waiting to burst on to the stage of world football like a 1,000-lb gorilla. There was no […]

Thirty years after his death, a new biography of Steve Marriott, of the Small Faces, paints a bleak picture of rock excess. The 30th anniversary of Steve Marriott’s death at the age of 44 – he died in a house fire on April 21 1991 caused by his falling asleep with a lit cigarette – finds the […]

The new royal yacht named after Prince Philip is a waste of £200 million, says MITCH BENN. “SERIOUSLY GUYS, READ THE ROOM” MOMENT OF THE WEEK  This week brought the news our beleaguered nation has been waiting to hear. Yes, we are still fighting our way out from underneath the virus; yes, our economy is […]

Mexican Coke is now on sale in the UK, but will it ever replace the real thing, with its iconic glass Coca-Cola bottles? My uncle used to buttonhole the sommeliers in expensive restaurants and ask for “a bottle of American Beaujolais”. A so-called ‘Mad Man’ – or Madison Avenue advertising copywriter – he knew the […]

Best known as Grouty in Porridge, Peter Vaughan was an actor who seemed to get better with age The Seven Ages of Man speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It amounts to a career trajectory for all serious actors. The best and luckiest manage to grow old with their audiences, going from playing “the whining schoolboy, with […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on Dalida, the French superstar singer who endured a catalogue of personal catastrophes They made an unlikely couple arriving at the Sanremo Music Festival in January 1967, the young protest singer some called the Italian Bob Dylan and the elegant, older chanteuse from Paris with a glittering decade of mainstream chart success behind […]

Tanit Koch on how the ruling German elite do not have the same upbringing as politicians in the UK If I had to choose just one word to praise the EU, it would be this: Erasmus. These academic exchanges are a beautifully efficient way to achieve cross-border friendship and mutual understanding. Because, yes, foreign languages […]