Jay Nordlinger
Encore! Encore!
Encores are an adornment to concert life — like a dessert, completing a meal, or an after-dinner mint
Varsity Matchless
University Challenge is a novel delight for an American
Thanks, Ma
The great cellist Yo-Yo Ma at 60 is still phenomenal
The Write Stuff
Is it ever worth the trouble reading journalism whose politics you fundamentally disagree with?
Privileged Outsider
The cult of Benjamin Britten lives on in Paul Kildea’s new biography, painting the composer as a perennial victim
Mazower’s New World Order
Reading Mark Mazower is like being lectured by the best left-wing lecturer you’ll ever have: he is brilliant but tiresome
A New Yorker Writes
Anthony Daniels has said he likes living in foreign countries. He has lived in several of them. For one thing, a foreign country’s problems are not your own problems — your own country’s. You can view them with a certain detachment. It may be too bad that Italy has gone childless, let’s say. But what really churns your gut is the barbarisation of Birmingham.
Do you know the definition of minor surgery? Surgery someone else is having.
I don’t live in Britain, but I have become addicted to the British press. I turn to it for information and amusement, yes. But also for something like comfort. As an American political journalist, I am enmeshed in my own country’s problems, and long have been. Sometimes these problems are bitter in one’s mouth. My cousins, the British, provide relief.
New York: A ‘Post-racial’ American vs an Old Coot
‘The Obama campaign will be touted as “historic,” and how do you run against history?’
Why Remoaners should back Boris
“Boris, ironically, now offers Remoaners the best chance of a soft Brexit, or at least a sensible one. And to those who want a second referendum—’the people’s vote’—there may even be a chance of that too.”
On the road
“In the summer of 1980, in the grip of some Kerouac-ish fantasy, I opted to hitch-hike from Laredo to New York”
Discovering the Great War of China
A third of a million Chinese labourers helped the Allies defeat the Kaiser, but their huge unsung contribution ended in betrayal