News and Opinion

The Department for Exiting the European Union will be wound up if the UK leaves the EU on January 31, the government has announced. Established in 2016 following the Brexit referendum, the department is responsible for overseeing negotiations to leave the EU and establish the future relationship between the bloc and Britain. Boris Johnson has […]

A dilution of Dickens, TIM WALKER reviews a stage production of A Christmas Carol. There’s a peculiar intimacy to A Christmas Carol. It’s Charles Dickens holding his readers by the scruff of the neck, saying he knows about the weaknesses of each and every one of them, and warning that if they don’t mend their […]

Never mind the musicians the capital has produced, SOPHIA DEBOICK concentrates on the songs it has inspired. While London has been an international musical hub since the days of Handel, the legendary albums made and visionaries born there countless, it is as a songwriting subject that the city has been most intriguing. London’s landmarks have […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on a new exhibition seeking to revive the reputation of Jessica Dismorr and others eclipsed both by their male counterparts and global events. The electricity was off because the bill was unpaid, the friends sat on crates scavenged from the nearby fruit and veg market in old Covent Garden, but when the first […]

In English, the word can be frustratingly imprecise. As PETER TRUDGILL reports, other languages have gone to greater lengths to ensure exactitude. A few years ago, the Greek translator of a book I had written got in touch to ask if a “cousin” I had referred to in the text was a man or a […]

Phil Spector was responsible for one of the greatest Christmas records ever made. SOPHIA DEBOICK tells the story and asks if we must reassess it in the light of his later murder conviction. He was the one producer deserving of the overused term ‘genius’, but Phil Spector will spend Christmas – and his 80th birthday […]

Launched 50 years ago, the magazine credited both its subjects and readers with a refreshing degree of intelligence, says WILL SIMPSON. For football fans of a certain age its name brings back memories of tiny shorts, shirts with outrageously large collars and most of all: Colour. For a generation Shoot! wasn’t just an entry point […]

In the era of selfies and iphone snaps, the photographs in a new exhibition about life magazine represent a lost world from the mid-20th century. RICHARD HOLLEDGE reports. What image would a magazine editor put on the cover of a new magazine? A picture of a celebrity? A sporting hero? Surely a bunch of beguiling […]

The country’s emergence from communism was more bloody than others. But, as TESSA DUNLOP discovered when she travelled there, that traumatic experience has left Romania in a very different place to its near neighbours. “I fired 29 bullets into him and Elena. No, I didn’t regret it. If I hadn’t executed them, I would have […]

Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission, has wound up the Brexit Party MEPs by saying she will only miss Remainers in the parliament when Brexit happens. Von de Leyen paid tribute to those anti-Brexit campaigners who had fought in the election to return a result more favourable to Britain staying […]

Cosy crimes? The novels of Agatha Christie are dark and political– that’s why, almost a century after the first one was published, they appeal so much to modern filmmakers. LUCY SCHOLES reports. Rian Johnson’s new film, Knives Out, is a glorious black-comedy romp of a whodunit, set in contemporary America but steeped in all the […]

For anyone looking for last-minute present ideas or just a new book for the new year, our writers recommend their favourite reads of 2019. BONNIE GREER Having worked as a writer with a women’s theatre group dedicated to women offenders and ex-offenders, I sometimes think that most ex-offenders are invisible. My book of the year, […]

A key European Union figure has backed calls to give Brits ‘associate’ EU citizenship after Brexit. Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian MEP who was made the European parliament’s representative on Brexit, said he backs the idea of EU citizenship, and called for the British government to reciprocate by giving EU citizens the same rights they have […]

It seems like the quintessential British Christmas tradition, but pantomime’s roots are to be found in Europe. Roger Domeneghetti explains. As Christmas approaches theatres across Britain will be packed out with families shouting “It’s behind you!” at men dressed as women and women dressed as young men. Pantomime is a staple of the festive season […]

Labour leadership candidate Emily Thornberry has claimed that Labour was ‘badly let down’ by his advisers. While the shadow foreign secretary declined to name anyone specifically, she said “people know who it is that I’m talking about”. Thornberry said senior Labour advisers should pay the price for the party’s disastrous election showing rather than junior […]

Whilst mourning the loss of former health secretary Frank Dobson, ALASTAIR CAMPBELL explains why the Labour party’s future looks bleak. It says something about how grim recent days have been that one of the highlights was a funeral. Frank Dobson – for it was to the former health secretary that we were bidding farewell – […]

A senior health chief has called for realism after the ‘fantasy politics’ during the general election campaign. NHS Providers deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery said that the health service needs bold and ambitious measures in the Queen’s Speech to tackle the big challenges over social care and funding. Writing in The Independent, Cordery said: “What […]

Keep your spirits high with these alternative Christmas carols, specially penned for the season by MITCH BEN. IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER In the bleak midwinter It was really bleak, Seriously very bleak And bleaker by the week. It couldn’t get much bleaker But probably will somehow, In the bleak midwinter That’s happening now. AWAY IN […]

The election confirmed the divergence of Scottish and UK politics and could lead to the sort of situation which has ensnared Spain, says MAURICE SMITH. There were no surprises when the phone rang at Bute House, the first ministerial residence in Edinburgh, last Friday. The caller was a triumphant Boris Johnson and he was in […]

A Tory MP’s selfie involving many of the new Conservative recruits has been mocked after Twitter users pointed out how male and white they all were. Jake Berry, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen, probably didn’t expect quite the response her received to his tweet. He boasted that he was welcoming some “of the new […]

There is plenty for liberal internationalists still to fight for, says IAN DUNT. Your opponents only win when you surrender. If there’s anything good to be found in the experience of total defeat, it’s that you get a bit of time to think. That’s what this Christmas period is. An opportunity to recharge, to reconnect […]

All sides must take their share of the blame for letting Boris Johnson win the election, argues MICHAEL WHITE. So Boris Johnson is using his electoral mandate to toughen his negotiating stance against the EU by denying MPs the power to extend the process beyond next Christmas, to weaken workers’ rights, wallop the constitution and […]

As part of her general election campaign for the Brexit Party, Ann Widdecombe has been paraded on an open-top bus shouting BREXIT… and the footage is truly bizarre. Widdecombe, who came a distant third with just 5.5% of the vote, could probably blame part of her loss on the fact she appeared to spend the […]

Leo Varadkar has refuted claims that Boris Johnson is a ‘little Englander’ for his Brexit views – claiming that he is actually a Europhile. In an interview with the Virgin Media One TV station in Ireland, Varadkar was asked about his relationship with Johnson. While relations between the UK and Irish governments have been strained […]

Donald Trump has become the third president in US history to be impeached, and the only one in modern times to be running for reelection facing the political equivalent of an indictment, an indelible mark on a purposely disruptive presidency. A majority in US House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump on the charge of […]

From early tragedy, MICK O’HARE explores the fascinating history and almost limitless future of mankind’s space stations. The very first mission to the very first space station had gone well and the cosmonauts of Soyuz 11 were on their way home. But as they headed away from the Salyut 1 station there was to be […]

Sir Ed Davey has hinted that he may run for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats again. Jo Swinson was forced to resign as leader when she lost her seat at the general election, having begun the party’s campaign with the claim that she could be the next prime minister. Sir Ed, who was Lib […]

ANDREW ADONIS writes his letter to Father Christmas with his wishlist for politics in 2020. Dear Father Christmas, Please give me reasons to be cheerful in 2020. Despite Brexit I don’t want to be Mr Scrooge, who “carried his own low temperature always about with him”. Could you start by making sure that next year […]