The headmistress of a school in Birmingham, England, decided that it was high time her pupils—or students, as I suppose we must now call them—learned a little tolerance. By the age of 4, it was surely essential that they should learn that not all children had a mummy and daddy, but that some ...

The monstrous regiment of modernists was so quick off the mark with their hideous, egomaniacal plans to rebuild the roof of Notre-Dame—one could not call any of their proposals a restoration—that I began to suspect that the fire that destroyed the roof was the result of a conspiracy by them. ...

He (or she) who lives by Twitter dies by Twitter, so it seems, and it is best for your peace of mind to keep your immortal thoughts away from this pernicious medium altogether. A publisher has just withdrawn the contract to publish a first book by a woman called Natasha Tynes because she posted ...

Some months ago I had the opportunity—I won’t call it the privilege—of listening to a speech given in the flesh by the former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. I do not much frequent politicians, and in fact have met very few of them. I was shocked by what I heard and saw. He struck me ...

There are several public figures from whose faces I feel compelled to avert my gaze, so irritating do I find them, among which are those of Messrs. Blair of Britain and Trudeau of Canada, La Compasionaria of New Zealand Jacinda Adern, and the Scottish nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon, whose ...

Joy at the misfortunes of others is no doubt an ineradicable part of Man’s bad character, and I doubt whether there is a person alive who has never experienced it. Generally speaking, however, most of us retain enough decency, or enough desire to appear decent in the eyes of others, not to ...

In the days when there was still capital punishment in Britain, the prison doctor had to certify a man fit for execution before he could be hanged. What fitness for execution consisted of, I am uncertain: It was a concept that was inadequately taught in medical school. Presumably fitness for ...

During a visit of the Spanish prime minister to Mexico, the president of that country wanted Spain to apologize for the abuses committed half a millennium ago by the conquistadores. This made about as much sense as the British prime minister asking Italy to apologize for the Roman conquest, or for ...

How is it that one recognizes one’s mistakes only after one has made them? The other day I was mortified to spot a gross grammatical error in an article that I had just published in a literary journal. To me it stood out from the page as if in neon lighting, and I felt depressed about it for the ...

I suppose that if I had to select a single figure as the preeminent intellectual influence of our time, it would have to be Marie Antoinette. She, you remember, played at being milkmaid or shepherdess while actually she was Queen of France. She had at least the excuse that being Queen of France was ...