‘In 2010, the smart people were either thrilled or alarmed by the prospect of an “emerging Democratic majority”, created by high immigration, de-industrialization and college education. Ten years on, influential magazines are still warning Republicans to play nice with a newly diverse electorate or go the way of the Whigs.’
No presidency for old men
Instead of coming away from my accidental meeting with Bernie dazzled, I left feeling sorry for him. He looked like an exhausted old man
By Harry Mount
From the Magazine
The death of populism has been greatly exaggerated
There have been setbacks — but populists are consolidating, not retreating
From the Magazine
The link between politics and moisturizer
With some surprise I found reset has been in use since the early 17th century
From the Magazine
An Englishman in New York
Mist was blowing in drifts off the East River and already I could feel the intoxication of the city
By Ian Thomson
From the Magazine
Roman funerals had real ‘emotional intelligence’
There was a tradition of preserving death masks of the departed, complete with lists of achievements
By Peter Jones
From the Magazine
The story of my only novel
I had to spend a solid year assuring readers that I did not prematurely ejaculate. Boy was that embarrassing
From the Magazine
Cold truth: Iceland’s melting glaciers are nothing to panic about
The glacier that had its last rites read in August had, in fact, more or less disappeared half a century ago
From the Magazine
2019 was not a good year for freedom of speech
Is everything rosy in the groves of academe?
By Toby Young
From the Magazine
How to lose votes and bore people
Impeachment and the Democratic primary are the two weakest plot lines of The Donald Trump Show
By Matt Purple
From the Magazine
Polls apart
The modern pollster tends to be in love with his model. Hence his predictions tend to confirm the model rather than pull back the curtain on other contingencies
From the Magazine
How to end endless wars
If politicians really wanted to ‘support the troops’, they’d introduce mandatory national service
From the Magazine
The case for Genghis Trump
What force on earth can reform a corrupt or incompetent elite, one that serves itself and its dreams rather the citizens of the country?
From the Magazine
Who’s right in the 2020s?
The American tradition of fair opportunity has been breached in our Gilded Age more than honored
From the Magazine
Why Trump will win again in 2020
There is a growing wrath in the country, either ignored, suppressed or undetected by the partisan media
From the Magazine
A crime still in progress
The Russiagate whistleblowers have blown their cover
By Lee Smith
From the Magazine
Trump and the troops
The president’s weird popularity with the military shows few signs of diminishing
From the Magazine
Books + Arts
Novel inspirations: H.L. Mencken, the bad boy of Baltimore
Ideas and theories were not Mencken’s meat and drink. Real people and social comedy were
From the Magazine
New York has really gone to pot when the tallest skyscrapers lie empty
Bad taste and bad manners are ubiquitous in New York, so why should good taste suddenly prevail in putting up buildings?
By Taki
From the Magazine
Stayin’ alive in ’75
Meryl Meisler’s photographs captured the family life and nightlife of Seventies New York
By James Panero
From the Magazine
Style on steroids: the power of Jerry Bruckheimer
Bruckheimer may think that the Oedipus Complex is a Greek shopping mall, but the set-ups of Bad Boys and Top Gun are classical
By Will Lloyd
From the Magazine
Bad feeling: why we need to defend freedom of reaction
People react differently to different things, and hooray for that
From the Magazine
Jung love
Savage Messiah: How Dr Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization by Jim Proser reviewed
By Micah Mattix
From the Magazine
The joy of rummaging through Gladstone’s annotated books
A visit to the Gladstone Library has the welcome effect of removing you from the worries and concerns of the world
From the Magazine
Is he talking to us?
De Niro should live up to his movie characters and stop his knee-jerk dissing of Donald Trump
By John Waters
From the Magazine
All modern art is quite useless
The contemporary artist doesn’t expect to have to suffer for what he calls his art. Away with the garret!
From the Magazine
George Eliot, radical but conservative
What other heroine in a 19th-century novel strangles her sister’s canary as a girl?
From the Magazine
Kingdoms of the wicked
How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century by Frank Dikötter reviewed
By Conrad Black
From the Magazine
A hero for the Snowflake age
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is now a politically correct pantywaist
From the Magazine
The audacity of verse
The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century by John Burnside reviewed
From the Magazine
Life
Show off and tell: the sad death of inconspicuous consumption
While I was in Manhattan I was dropped by my New Yorker girlfriend for not being rich enough
By Harry Mount
From the Magazine
A Godfrey New Year
All I had to do was give myself a colonic with a turkey baster and a sachet of organic miso soup, and I was ready to embark on my metaphysical quest
From the Magazine
After the Americans
The SDF look like city hipsters in an Arab village, blasting Kurdish revolutionary music from civilian cars
From the Magazine
In the cart of the city
‘The new owners employ Army vets for a few dollars a day to sit by a van in case an inspector comes’
From the Magazine
The culture war is lost
Americans are learning to live in a post-Christian age
By Rod Dreher
From the Magazine
My journey to the heart of prehistoric England
I would be staying in this cottage in the shadow of Wansdyke to see if I wanted to rent it
From the Magazine
Food and Drink
French women do get fat
The effortlessly stick-thin Parisienne is a mythical creature
From the Magazine
Back in the USSR
Foraging for mushrooms and the taste of freedom in eastern Europe, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall
By Rory MacLean
From the Magazine
