News and Opinion

Attack adverts showing Green party candidate for chancellor Annalena Baerbock as Moses with a list of 10 commandments have caused uproar in Germany Readers of largely sober and serious German newspapers were met with some surprising content recently: Full-page adverts dominated by a photo of the Green Party candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, dressed as […]

María Paz Fuentes Fernández's family got a shock after her death - she had booked a local newspaper notice banning them from her funeral

The European Union’s chief executive has vowed to take the steps needed to stymie a new law in Hungary.  The law in question bans content portraying homosexuality or gender reassignment to children. The Hungarian parliament passed the bill last week, 157-1, but it requires endorsement from president Áder for it to take effect.  The government […]

Mitch Benn looks at Dido Harding's attempt to become chief executive of the NHS in another look back at the week in politics

The news that John Bercow was joining the Labour Party came as much a surprise to Sir Keir Starmer as everyone else.

Home secretary Priti Patel has said that British nationals living in Europe are having difficulty accessing benefits, services, and jobs. Patel accused the EU nations of hypocrisy and of treating Britons unfairly, exactly five years after the country voted to leave the bloc. She said that “a number of reported instances of UK nationals in […]

Jason Solomons meets Ben Wheatley, the director behind films like Kill List, Sightseers and Free Fire, ahead of the release of new movie In The Earth Everyone went to the woods in lockdown. Remember all those walks, those endless trudges through mud and twigs and leaves and into forests you’d never bothered to visit, dragging […]

For the 5th anniversary of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, campaign group Best for Britain has projected the names of thousands of British people in the centre of Brussels.  Their aim was to express feelings of continued goodwill, familiarity and solidarity with the country’s closest neighbours.  The message was projected onto the Station […]

A new exhibition celebrates the pioneering British artist Eileen Agar and her sideways look at the life aquatic Seven months before the outbreak of the Second World War, left wing and anti-war artists exhibited together at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore and Vanessa Bell were among those contributing some 200 works to the exhibition […]

The food industry is predicting a nightmare for British customers, with price rises and empty shelves caused by Brexit It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain as customers digest mixed news about Brexit’s impact on food. The downside is that your weekly shop is going to cost more; the […]

Will the loss of Simon Rattle be London’s musical gain? UK music critics have been gnashing their teeth at the news that Simon Rattle will leave the music directorship of the London Symphony Orchestra and beetle off to Bavaria. Heading to Germany to flee underfunding in the homeland is a tradition for money-conscious European musicians, […]

Marseille’s music is as self-assured as the city itself, says SOPHIA DEBOICK  Marseille is a proud and ambitious city. Founded by the Greeks around 600BC, France’s second city’s ancient origins have been no bar to striving for the modern, and it is known for its ground-breaking 20th and 21st century architecture. Le Corbusier’s revolutionary La […]

Prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s government will pardon the nine jailed leaders of Catalonia’s failed 2017 independence bid.  During a speech in Barcelona’s opera house attended by around 300 members of Catalan civil society, he said “I am convinced that getting these nine people out of prison is a clear message of concord.” Twelve separatist leaders […]

Emerging from his party’s recent electoral victory in Chesham and Amersham, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has ruled out the possibility of an alliance with Labour.  On LBC‘s Swarbrick, Davey said that “there were quite a lot of Labour people and Green people who voted for us very comfortably, partly because they could see that […]

Turkey has been gripped by a scandal involving a mafia boss on the run making extraordinary allegations about the country's political elite

The anniversary of the Brexit referendum will barely register a ripple in Europe, where Britain was once seen as a place of dynamism, excitement and promise It is obviously a very subjective generalisation, but no European nation really cares that much about how they are being perceived by the rest of Europe. In the UK, […]

He was sitting on one of the iron-framed and wooden-bottomed chairs there are dotted about beneath the chestnut trees lining the Esplanade des Feuillants, and as I recall – although, I concede with such a brief encounter, my memory may well have embellished – he was tilted back on its rear legs. His then-wife and […]

It is not too late for Iran and world powers to clinch a deal to revive the 2015 nuclear accord, says the European Union’s foreign policy chief.  Josep Borrell said an agreement was “very close” after Sunday’s meeting in Vienna and could make the Middle East safer by bringing aid to millions of Iranians hit […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on an award for translated fiction that is gradually growing in stature, and its very worthy winner While most of the annual book award talk is naturally focused on the Booker Prize for Fiction there are other gongs whose gentler tones occasionally penetrate the literary din. The Women’s Prize for Fiction grows in […]

French president Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen have both faced a crushing defeat in the nation’s regional elections. Their respective parties, Macron’s centrist La République en Marche (LREM) and Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN), secured fewer votes than hoped and instead saw incumbent conservatives surge ahead in the first round. An IPSOS […]

Birger Ruud helped to change his sport for good, before serving his country against its Nazi occupiers It’s hard to imagine a sport more exhilarating for the competitor than ski jumping. The jumper hauls themself onto the in-run, skis perfectly parallel, crouching as low as possible as they hurtle down a slope as steep as 38 […]

Tim Walker reviews After Life at the National Theatre – and only awards it one star. The National Theatre re-opened its doors last week with a show called, appropriately enough, After Life. The venue has itself been hovering between life and death for a very long time, like the characters in Jack Thorne’s play, and even its […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the pacifist campaigner Bertha von Suttner, a woman not intimidated by anyone she met, even the most powerful men in the world

PETER TRUDGILL on how bottlers became butlers There are about 45,000 people in Britain who bear the surname Butler. In comparison, there are a quarter of million Browns and half a million Smiths. But 45,000 still seems to be rather a high number if we assume that all of our contemporary Butlers are descended from men who […]

Since the start of the Syrian civil war 10 years ago, Europe has taken in more than one million refugees. So what has been the impact on the continent?

Nowhere are the consequences of Brexit being felt more acutely than in Northern Ireland, where the tensions are continuing to rise and the full ramifications are yet to play out Five years ago this month Arlene Foster was in France to cheer on Northern Ireland’s heroics in Euros 2016. Just months into her stint as first […]

Kate Winslet is brilliant in Mare Of Easttown – but then so was Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley, the BBC show from which Mare has clearly taken a few pointers Does this sound familiar? You’re sat watching television. It’s a crime drama starring an actress you’ve never really disliked but never gone out of your […]

Parisians are angry at the state of their city, from the rubbish in the streets to unsightly cycling schemes and fears of crime. Long-term resident JOHN LICHFIELD asks what hope there is for perhaps the greatest city of all When I visited Paris for the first time in July 1964, aged 14, I was shocked. The […]