Rita reflects on 2015's biggest issue in American discourse Does a bullet cause more mayhem to the body, more pain to the victim, if the shooter is labeled a “terrorist” rather than “mentally ill” or a “thug”? If the shooter is a police officer, or the neighborhood drug dealer, or a toddler ... Read More...

This video is an hour long, but I can assure you that it flies by, because Nick Cohen speaks like a man whose hour has come. Watch it if you want to understand the perverse dynamics of current Western politics. I have to admit that a few years ago I was ... Read More...

Rita provides a liberal's guide to surviving this year's family Thanksgiving get-togethers... Thanksgiving is almost here, and Americans everywhere are dreading the highjacking of dinner table conversation by the grumpy uncles and drunken cousins who think we all want to hear their political rants and favorite conspiracy theories. Remember the year ... Read More...

Literary Britain is a very small world, argues Henry Jeffreys, it really does need more 'diversity' - and that means publishing books by people who don't agree with you about everything... My three year old daughter’s nursery school has a diversity officer. On the wall in her classroom is the word ... Read More...

My favourite Australian - the competition is not stiff - is Michael ‘Maxy’ Klinger. Michael Klinger is a softly-spoken, slender, crooked man with austerely cropped grey hair and the permanent wrinkled grin that pale-skinned Antipodeans have evolved to cope with the sun. He makes a living by carefully, repetitively striking ... Read More...

We could all write screeds on why left of labour groupings have not managed to expand even as people were angry about the status quo but the truth is that none of them have ever been able to bring together the enthusiasm and direction that Corbyn has managed. Michael Rosen - ... Read More...

Hugh Laurie once wrote of his teenage self: “I somehow contrived to pull off the gruesome trick of being both fat and thin at the same time”. This summer has managed to be similarly perverse, being first disgustingly hot then offensively cold and wet. Why do we British even pretend ... Read More...

Rita reckons that in the southern states of the US, history is written by the losers... That winners write the history books is conventional wisdom, but it is turned on its head here in America. The losers of the Civil War seized control of the popular history narrative almost as soon ... Read More...

It has been heartening to see the emergence of Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon. Ever since the golden era of McEnroe and Connors, men’s tennis has been rather lacking in jerks. Krygios is a proper, no-bones-about-it jerk - but even better is that I can add him to my cherished list of ... Read More...

I have, at last, discovered the secret of happiness. You abolish Tuesday. I have written about Tuesday before, elsewhere, and noted that it and I have had many meetings and no good has ever come of them. We go way back, to school. Term always began on a Tuesday and it ... Read More...