Diary
Sex matters
“It’s been quite the month for the Gender Critical community”
Diary
‘I have barely worn trousers for five months now. In the Zoom era no-one sees below the fifth button of your shirt. You could get away with wearing nothing at all’
Bearded diplomacy
‘The illusion of control that dictatorships offer is just that. They promise their acolytes eternal life in exchange for silence. But silence is expensive’
Spirit of the age
‘I’m not sure that “gender studies” are having a terribly good war. A professor tweeted—Pat Robertson style—that Covid-19 “took its revenge” on men after the domestic abuse they inflicted on women’
Diary: the limits of liberalism
‘Many of those who usually insist ministers must “listen to the experts” are among those who now say Boris should ignore them. Armchair generals and football managershave become armchair virologists and epidemiologists’
Uncovering hidden family roots
‘I’m 52, damn it, even if I feel frustratingly closer to 82 on the bad days when my fingers are too weak to type or too stiff to do up buttons’
An oversized addition to a collection of Victoriana
‘As I have now discovered, moving a life-size marble statue is a complicated and expensive business’
Political homelessness galls; private pleasures keep me sane
‘I am an instinctive, conventional, tribal Conservative voter. But now I just can’t bear even to listen to the shenanigans in Parliament a moment longer’
Breakfast, diabetes research, and the right to make bad jokes
‘The Today Programme will survive John Humphrys leaving but will we all survive the death of the right to make poor jokes?’
Nostalgia’s comeback
‘The urge to renew tussles with the impulse to preserve’
The Brexit crunch approaches
Thorny issues remain unresolved as the transition period comes to a close. Yet the hurdles to a deal are not insurmountable
Meritocracy makes a new ruling class
Innovation has often come from hard work by unlettered people. But young progressives now seem to treat education as a proxy for virtue
Some black lives matter more than others
Black Lives Matter misses the point—we should highlight the progress we have made, not split society and trap ourselves in victimhood