News and Opinion

Composer, May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893 On the night of November 1, 1893, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and a group of friends including his brother Modest and their nephew Vladimir Davydov, known as ‘Bob’, left a performance of Alexander Ostrovsky’s play The Ardent Heart and made for a regular haunt, Leiner’s restaurant on St […]

As the Brexit Bill continues its chaotic progress through the Commons, pro-European peer HUGH DYKES warns that the Lords are ready to take up the fight when it reaches them For the UK – a country with a proud tradition of proper governance alongside lively party politics – the progress, or otherwise, of the infamous […]

Research by the British Election Study suggests the ethnic minority vote was crucial in the EU referendum. Only a third voted Leave, but those voters could well have clinched it for Brexit. Before that momentous June day, I went round the country to meet black, Asian, Arab, Chinese and various other non-indigenous Brits. In October […]

The playwright, author and critic on the fight against change The American journalist and author, Thomas L. Friedman, has given the times we live in a name: the Age of Acceleration. Change has come and is coming so quickly that it compares to looking out of the window of a jet in flight. We cannot […]

Editor-at-large ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on why leaving the EU is so damaging to the health service Another day, due to end with another anti-Brexit speech to another anti-Brexit meeting, but something truly upsetting happened en route to delay my arrival. Given that one of my exhortations to the meeting when I made it was that those […]

As Westminster continues to reel from sex revelations, JANE MERRICK says it was wrong 20 years ago and it’s wrong now Sir Michael Parkinson has added his name to a growing list of people apparently confused about where the current harassment scandal leaves their ability to speak to and interact with the opposite sex. In […]

Being forced to wear one takes all meaning away from this symbol, says comedian, musician and writer MITCH BENN Have you seen The Death Of Stalin yet? You really should. It’s marvellous. If nothing else it establishes the great Jason Isaacs as our most bewilderingly versatile character actor and should, if there’s any justice, afford […]

For a true idea of the untold tragedy of gun crime in the US, look beyond the mass shootings to the ‘mundane’ murders. ANDREW PURCELL reports In the early hours of last Sunday, a gunman approached a group of teenagers on a street in Philadelphia and fired eight shots, killing 16-year-old Marquez Houston. A little […]

Britain’s unofficial poet laureate Tony Harrison tells ANTHONY CLAVANE about how the divisions exposed by his landmark poem, V, are as raw now as ever They say you should never meet your heroes. It is even less advisable, perhaps, to chair a question-and-answer session with them in a beautiful church after they have just declared […]

Article 50, which triggers Britain’s exit from the EU, can be reversed, according to the man who wrote it. Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, a former EU ambassador, said Brexit could be reversed right up to the last minute, despite Theresa May today announcing a withdrawal date and time would be on the bill going before […]

MICHAEL WHITE on another succession of crises as the UK slips yet further in the world power stakes Watching Gavin Williamson, untested in any ministerial office let alone a military one, taking over at the Ministry of Defence from Sir Michael Fallon reminded me of the spectacle a few weeks ago which saw Britain’s latest […]

RICHARD PORRITT rounds up the losers and losers (because there are no winners) of another crazy seven days on Planet Brexit 10 Peter Lundgren MEP Swedish right-winger Lundgren has claimed this week that warnings about Britain being isolated and poor after Brexit are ‘bulls**t’. Phew. This from a man who represents a party launched by […]

RICHARD PORRITT with the week’s big stories ‘Can she last until Christmas?’ That is the question we pose on the front page of this week’s paper… and it’s a question a Number 10 insider answered with a sigh moments after her doomed conference speech last month. ‘Well,’ he continued amid the shock of the worse […]

The Belgian town of Doel should have been wiped off the map more than a decade ago. The threat of destruction still hangs over it, but for now street art is sustaining it. Photographer Bradley Wood went along to capture the town before it vanishes for good I first heard about the town of Doel […]

Facing upheaval in Europe, modern art found a very special refuge in New York. So, says CLAUDIA PRITCHARD, a new blockbuster MoMA exhibition in Paris represents something of a homecoming When the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York was founded in 1929, it had no museum building, and precious little art. But it […]

As the slaughter of the Great War intensified, and certainties that had preceded the conflict faded away, an imaginative and rebellious spirit emerged. SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back on a year when the world hung in the ​balance The First World War changed Europe’s soul. Old notions of sacrifice and patriotism were smashed by the realities […]

The world’s premier film and television streaming service Netflix recently went over and above industry predictions when it announced third quarter results showing it now has 104 million subscribers globally. It added 5.3 million subscribers in the past quarter alone, and predicts it will add another 6.3 million in the final quarter of the year […]

The murder of Marion Crane, as she took a shower at the Bates Motel, was one of the turning points of the 20th century, argues CHRIS SULLIVAN In Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock plumped for perhaps the most direct, blunt film title in cinema history. Long before the suspense starts, no one can be in any doubt […]

From precocious, early success, the British painter’s career moved to subsequent obscurity, via misfortune and prejudice. But, as FLORENCE HALLETT reports, a new exhibition reclaims him as one of the 20th century’s great artists In his Last Self-Portrait, the despair of a man cruelly neglected in his lifetime, but defiant as death approached, marks a […]

A new international study shows how narcissism and an unrealistic belief in national greatness led to the successes of Donald Trump and Brexit. SCOTT OLIVER reports Exactly a year before her cough-infested car crash address of the Tory party conference, our erstwhile Remainer Prime Minister Theresa May hopped aboard the populist bandwagon by announcing: ‘If […]

The government has announced there will be a delay of “no more than three weeks” in publishing its secret papers on the economic impact of Brexit. Brexit minister Steve Baker told the Commons today that the Government would need time to release the studies despite being ordered by Speaker John Bercow to publish them immediately. […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the Nordic roots of a French wine The word burgundy has a number of different meanings. It can refer to a particular dark red colour. It can apply to certain kinds of wine. And it can signify an area of eastern France. These meanings are of course all linked. Burgundy – in […]

Is the House of cards about to fall? PAUL CONNEW examines a blockbuster week in the White House as the Russian Connection begins to really bite What did the president know and when did he know it? It was the question that dominated the Watergate scandal until the final curtain of disgrace came down on […]

Comedian, musician and writer MITCH BENN on wishful thinking and romantic fantasies There was an article in the Daily Telegraph this week (I’ll give you a minute to stop grinding your teeth in grim-faced anticipation as to what huffing buffoonery might be forthcoming… all done? Let’s continue) bewailing the plight of conservative students (and let’s […]

Turkey has just got its 93rd political party. But, says SUNA ERDEM, the Good Party and its leader Meral Aksener could bring the troubled country the rejuvenation it desperately needs The Good Party. It sounds like a Netflix mini-series. But in Turkey, it’s very much a reality – a new political grouping on which desolate […]

Andy Wigmore’s attempt at ‘sarcasm’ on Vote Leave’s use of bots was a characteristic piece of mischief from this sharpshooting Brexiteer, say RACHEL DAVIS and RICHARD PORRITT Sharp-shooter, bad boy of Brexit and master of the dark arts of political communication – Andy Wigmore is either a ‘good laugh’ or a ‘dangerous individual’ depending who […]

President Xi Jinping’s position is strengthened and his vision for China is clear. But, says CHARLES BURTON, it means he will have to take the blame if things go wrong When the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Congress drew to a close recently, President Xi Jinping emerged, as intended, with a steely new grip on power. […]

La Terrasse in Wissant, France, and Rocksalt in Folkestone, Kent, are just 21 miles apart. But, as our new restaurant critic VICTOR LEWIS SMITH discovers in the first of an occasional series, there is a world of difference between British and French cuisine As an ex-smoker, who used to be on 60 a day (and […]