Opinion

Bonnie Greer on how American’s obsession with personal freedom makes Joe Biden’s fight against coronavirus even tougher “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, ’cause once you’re dead then that’s a bit too late.” And to the tune of her great song Jolene, Dolly Parton got herself […]

TIM WALKER reminisces on his time covering the tax evasion trial of Ken Dodd. One normally only gets to spend an hour or so in the company of a big star – that’s all that tends to be allocated for even the biggest interviews – but in the case of Ken Dodd it was for […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how easy it is to make false assumptions about connections between words  Etymology is the study of the origins of words and the development of their forms and meanings. It is a scholarly activity which needs considerable knowledge of large numbers of languages, plus language history, linguistic change, historical linguistics, semantics (the […]

Next week’s elections in the Netherlands will be seen as a test of how voters assess their government’s performances in the Covid crisis.  Four years ago, the world watched the Dutch elections – among the first major votes after the Brexit referendum and election of Donald Trump – for a clue to whether the anti-European, populist right was poised for a […]

TANIT KOCH on what the Germans are only just learning about their country under the long rule of Angela Merkel. Most Germans (ven not engaged in ze race for pole pool positions) will have come across one phrase in those heady days when we could actually go on holiday: “You’re lucky, you’ve got Merkel.”  Britons, […]

Musicians from the US capital city have been more effective than many of its politicians at articulating the country’s problems. By SOPHIA DEBOICK The official presidential playlists issued by Joe Biden – who marks 50 days in office this week – do not necessarily reveal much about his personal musical tastes. The practice, started by […]

Independence for Scotland would represent a reckless ‘hold my beer’ response to Brexit. By DOUGLAS ALEXANDER. I’m Scottish, British and European. I’m comfortable with layered identities, with pluralism, and I believe deeply in international cooperation. In a previous life I was the UK’s Europe minister so I’ve seen the EU from the inside. It isn’t perfect, but I continue […]

Recent unrest in the country reflects the competing forces which have been exerted on it for centuries. Should it look to Moscow or to Europe? Andrew North reports from Tbilisi A narrow street in the centre of Tbilisi lined by distinguishedlooking 19th century houses leads to a brutalist, yellow-brown Soviet-era office block that houses the […]

The best way to get the most out of our NHS is to compare it with health systems across Europe – and how they pay their workers. Everyone knows the truism. The NHS is a national religion. Every other institution is known by its name, if it’s known at all. But the health service is “our” NHS. The people […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of Iolanda Balaș, an extraordinary athlete who dominated her sport, despite the petty interferences of her country’s communist authorities. It rained in Rome on September 8, 1960, a light, persistent afternoon drizzle that drenched the crowd at a packed Stadio Olimpico and saw athletes and officials alike drifting ethereally around the […]

Comedian Mitch Benn hands out his alternative awards of another week in politics… REPEAT OFFENDER OF THE WEEK Rishi Sunak, who followed up last week’s excruciating “I’m just a guy, standing in front of a country, commending my budget to the House” video with an equally bizarre sequel in which he was interviewed by a […]

Fishing has overshadowed discussion of wider issues affecting the environment since Brexit

This May will see the country’s largest round of contests outside a general election, in an extraordinary day of democracy and crucial contests Election buffs are in for an exciting spring; and for every party it will be unusually tense. For the first time since Brexit and the outbreak of Covid, millions of real votes, […]

LIZ GERARD on what is behind the contrast in coverage between the two royals. Why does the press hate Meghan? Why does it give her such a hard time and Prince Andrew such an easy ride? It must be because of her colour, her nationality, her gender, her wokeness. Or so at least one planet in […]

JAMES BALL on Europe’s very uneven vaccine rollout. With so much riding on the vaccine rollout across Europe, it is perhaps unsurprising it has been quite so tempestuous and bad-tempered. Governments have been accusing one another of irresponsibility, of cheating on supplies, or botching their rollouts. Last week, Italy even stopped a shipment of vaccines destined for […]

Lack of knowledge about the condition has left Long Covid sufferers desperate and vulnerable to quack treatments.  Kate can’t hear properly. She adds hearing loss to a list of other daily symptoms which include migraines, rashes, tremors and nerve damage. An author and chartered psychologist, Kate is on a waiting list for imaging and other diagnostic […]

Irish journalist and academic DENNIS KENNEDY on the consequences of a demographic revolution in Northern Ireland The Northern Ireland Protocol promises to be 21st century Europe’s Schleswig-Holstein Question, the apparently intractable territorial dispute lasting most of the 19th century involving Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Austria and some others over the two provinces straddling south Denmark and northern Germany. Lord […]

A new era of advertising in the air is being tested in Germany A new era of advertising in the sky is being tested in Germany, where a squadron of planes flying in formation has written ‘Hallo Berlin’ and ‘Hallo Hamburg’ at an altitude of 3,000m above the cities. The messages are the work of […]

The United States has never seen an elected politician quite like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who takes the word ‘controversial’ to new extremes. Pulitzer prize-winner and fellow Georgian ALBERT SCARDINO reports on where the conspiracy theorist congresswoman has emerged from. The northern part of Georgia is a land that has folded itself into a series of granite waves […]

With galleries badly affected by Covid restrictions, street art has come to the fore to chronicle coronavirus. It’s a year or so now since the first lockdown. While many of us have been stranded indoors during this time artists and visual activists for whom the streets are both canvas and in part medium have managed to […]

As a senior minister becomes mired in a major corruption case, what is it about the country that makes it so susceptible to such scandals? When Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s first government was capsized in 2019 by the corruption of his coalition partners, it was largely shrugged off as the sort of accident that happens […]

Fifty years ago, Michael Caine strode onto screens as the eponymous hero of Get Carter. In a navy-blue three-piece suit, with shotgun in hand he not only dragged British cinema into the 1970s but captured a great city on the cusp of change. By Roger Domeneghetti As the thrumming sound of the train segues into Roy Budd’s classic funk […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the astonishing film CV of Max von Sydow. In the summer of 1959 Max von Sydow was attending the Cannes Film Festival. Two years earlier The Seventh Seal, his first high-profile starring role and arguably the best of his collaborations with director Ingmar Bergman, had picked up the Cannes jury’s Special Prize […]

TIM WALKER on his friend, the director Michael Grandage. The first time I remember talking to Michael Grandage was as he was standing anxiously in the foyer of the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in Covent Garden. It was the first night of Frost/Nixon. “I’ve been looking forward to this one,” I said. He replied: “I’m terrified.”  The […]

Boris Johnson is famous for making babies. Now his Brexit is making babies unhappy. It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, where Boris Johnson dismisses the unfolding post-Brexit trade fiasco as mere “teething problems”, Michael Gove talks of “issues which I would not describe as teething problems” and manufacturers […]

Brexit wasn't the first time leaders tried to stoke up tensions in the name of 'freedom' 

Few politicians have fallen quite as far and quite as fast as Nicolas Sarkozy. Nicolas Sarkozy marked his finest political hour in characteristically brash style. The night of his election victory over Socialist rival Ségolène Royal on May 6, 2007, he spent celebrating at a private bash at the exclusive Le Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs-Elysées. It was a select gathering […]

What impact will the SNP’s extraordinary internecine battle have on the prospects for Scottish independence? He wouldn’t… would he? Would Alex Salmond, smarting and furious at what he sees as a top-level plot not only to damage his reputation but to have him thrown in jail, really try to bring down his successor, and risk […]

An immigration crisis is facing Britain now that Brexit reality is hitting

Emmanuel Macron is finding that overseas engagements can be difficult to disentangle from. Crowds of Malians gather on the streets of Bamako as the smell of burning polyester wafts through the air. Another French flag has been set alight. Elsewhere, a tricolour adorned with a skull and crossbones is held high, flanked by signs that […]

The vendetta between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the press cannot end well for anyone. That’s it then. They’ve gone for good. Driven out by the press. There have been plenty of instances where newspapers have been accused of hounding celebrities and royals and every time the same defences are wheeled out: “They want the publicity […]

European leaders have made catastrophic errors over vaccines, for which their citizens are paying a price. But the shambles has not undermined the basic principles on which the EU is built. The roll-out of the Covid vaccine should be a moment for universal celebration, but something disturbing is happening. It’s being wrapped in a Brexit narrative […]