Opinion

TIM WALKER remembers a meeting with a particularly pensive Rowan Atkinson I met Rowan Atkinson on an autumn day in 1988 that, he informed me, was the 10th anniversary of the start of his career in show business. Up until that point, his credits included the ground-breaking satirical television series Not the Nine 0’Cock News, Blackadder and its […]

The FA Cup holds an almost mystical appeal in south-east Asia. Now a Thai family have rewritten its history, as well as the destiny of unfashionable Leicester City If you ever spent time in South East Asia in the month of May you would know that there was one match that had almost mystical appeal. […]

The challenge of funding and providing social care is not unique to the UK. So what can we learn from other countries?

Why did Britain fall out of love with speedway, and how did Poland take over as the sport’s new spiritual home? Not so long ago, the start of the British speedway season would have been big news. That wasn’t the case this week, when the first of this year’s Covid-delayed league fixtures took place. Speedway was, at one […]

Restrictions might be easing and art galleries opening their doors again, but are virtual visits now here to stay?  So here I am in the National Gallery relishing the pulsating drama of Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast. By my side, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, director of the gallery, no less, is enthusing about the “huge emotional punch” of the painting which […]

Often seen as serious to the point of greyness, former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has surprised many with his incendiary comments on immigration. So what lies behind them? He seemed to be everything Brexiteers disliked about the EU. A serious-minded bureaucrat steeped in the smooth workings of Europe’s capitals and chancelleries and adept at relentlessly channelling the orthodoxies of […]

Transport for London has retired its fleet of classic Routemaster buses, which has been running on the number 15 route, the capital’s last running heritage service. So, farewell then to the Routemaster bus – and while I fully appreciate that those of my readers who live elsewhere than the corporate death star formerly known as […]

Protests, polemic and polls show how Islamists and the far right are targeting Jews and attempting to rewrite the painful past “Our parents kept the suitcases packed, ready to leave any moment,” a friend wrote after I asked how she was coping with the anti-Semitic protests in Berlin. “Our generation of German Jews had long since stowed the […]

The song contest is just first of a series of events that highlight the tension between a desire to open up societies and the need to remain vigilant against the virus Never far from scandal, one of the greatest controversy’s surrounding this year’s Eurovision Song Contest is the fact that it is being held at […]

Health secretary Matt Hancock has released a video in which he is standing in front of an existing hospital and calls it “one of 40 new hospitals we’re going to build” VIOLATION OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICS OF THE WEEK A few days ago, health secretary Matt Hancock released a video in which he is […]

Chris West, an historian of the contest, chronicles its greatest ever controversies After a year’s hiatus caused by the pandemic the Eurovision Song Contest returns this week, in Rotterdam. As ever, the event has been accompanied by a palaver about some of the entries. The main focus this year has been on Belarus, which has form for doing […]

Former Commons speaker John Bercow on his anger at the government’s warped priorities and the Voter ID plan which proposes "a solution to a problem that does not exist"

Nearly five years since the Brexit vote it's proving to be far from the success the ringleaders promised

Readers have their say on Scottish independence Thank you very much for Ian Dunt’s article highlighting the unmistakably close parallels between the mendacious arguments of Brexiters and the SNP. It has been obvious for ages that the separatists have been using words and slogans almost identical to those who succeeded in splitting the UK away […]

It’s time for Labour to look for funding from those that share its internationalist social liberal values. I thoroughly agree with the views expressed by Alastair Campbell in his open letter to Keir Starmer. However, I would like to draw attention also to the important trends set out by Peter Keller in his excellent analysis. […]

Former BBC Gaza reporter JAMES RODGERS on why the region’s conflict has suffered from the world picking sides It is a part of the world still blighted by the scars of empire, the meddling of other states and the failures of its own leaders. And, with wearying familiarity, this month violence has broken out once more. As troops mobilise against […]

Britain finds itself on a collision course with France over fishing and access to the EU single market as forms and fees on UK visits to friends and family in France begin to bite It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain as various Brexit chickens continue to come home […]

We shouldn’t be shy of telling some home truths each time the cycle of violence spins once more Talking about ‘both sides’ of the Israel-Palestine issue makes us feel better. Every few years, the violence flares up again, like some hellish treadmill, rumbling forward to nowhere, each step another atrocity, another failure. Framing the situation as […]

LIZ GERARD crunches the numbers on how Paul Dacre’s Daily Mail covered BBC stories and finds evidence that makes a mockery of the idea of him as an impartial arbiter. Over the last ten years of the Dacre reign, the Daily Mail carried more than 4,000 news stories with BBC in the headline or subhead, about […]

A decision on whether Paul Dacre will become the next head of Ofcom is expected imminently. That it is even being considered is a scandal that reveals much about the current administration There are any number of reasons why Paul Dacre should not be appointed head of Ofcom, the super-regulator that oversees not only our […]

JOHN KAMPFNER on Charles Michel, a man whose recent travails reveal much about the shortcomings of the EU’s institutions How many presidents does it take to run a union? The answer, when it comes to Europe, is three. Plus, a high representative. The problem of duplication is compounded by the fact that each of them […]

The music of the Danish capital, like the city itself, is characterised by an extraordinary imagination and by flights of fantasy Despite being practically-minded enough to have made Denmark one of the countries with the highest quality of life in the world, the Danes also understand the power of imagination. Their most famous son and master of […]

Forty years on, the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Pope John Paul II remain as murky as ever. Roger Domeneghetti assesses the so-called ‘Bulgarian Connection’ Just before 5pm on the afternoon of May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II stepped into his open-topped ‘Popemobile’ ready to take a short, but slow journey around St Peter’s Square. The sun-drenched […]

TIM WALKER on his run-ins with Michael Winner, a thin-skinned character whose reputation has come under fresh scrutiny in the #MeToo era The late Daily Mail gossip columnist Nigel Dempster loved to have a flutter. When I worked as his deputy around the turn of the millennium, he’d be watching the racing on television most afternoons. On […]

With good reason, their windows are a source of great pride for Germans. But is it time for them to start looking beyond them? There’s one thing I just can’t get my German head around whenever I’m in a UK bathroom. I’m not referring to the separate hot and cold water taps – although they can be a […]

As Portugal tops the list of ‘green’ destinations for UK tourists, Will Self looks back on trips there and ahead to the future of tourism after the Covid-19 pandemic So, the list of ‘green’ destinations has been published and holiday bookings have already soared. The Great British Jet-Off – a major component of our national […]

The demise of some social distancing measures might be celebrated by some, but for others they will be hard to say goodbye to Have you updated your online shopping basket? Listerine? Right Guard? Extra chewing gum? Are you ready for Huggy Monday and the advance of the personal space invaders? With more guests allowed at […]

José Mourinho is a busted flush… so why does he keep getting plum managerial jobs? We really should stop doubting José Mourinho when he tells us he is “a special one… .not one out of the bottle.”  A linguist, a persuader, a winner in Portugal, England, Italy, and Spain. But when the trophies stopped and […]

On the eve of an American poet’s 80th birthday, the places and people over here broadened his horizons When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’, Bob Dylan – who will celebrate his 80th birthday on 24th May – was clear […]

Why communication may have been the least of the problems when the Vikings invaded The Great Heathen Army of the Danes invaded eastern England in 865. Large-scale Viking settlements followed throughout the 9th century and on into the 10th. Many eastern and northern areas of our island came to have a heavily Scandinavian or Scandinavianised […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on what might have happened if the attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life had been successful The two bullets fired by his would-be assassin perforated Pope John Paul II’s colon and small intestine, and he lost nearly three-quarters of his blood as he was rushed to hospital. Yet, they narrowly missed his mesenteric artery and […]

How the archipelago’s dialect hung on for centuries, but is now disappearing The Channel Islands lie between 70 and 85 nautical miles off the south coast of England. They are very much closer to the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy in France, which is only about 12 nautical miles away. The islands are not part of the […]