I didn’t sense much enthusiasm for the formal 80th-anniversary celebrations of VE Day across Britain last week, at least not amongst the young. How to combat this alarming apathy? Over in America, Donald Trump has just tried rebranding it with the new U.S.-centric name of “Victory Day for World ...
Strange news from the Czech Republic (or Czechia, or Czech-Land, or World of Czechs, or whatever the place has decided to call itself this month), where a colony of beavers have just built themselves some dams in the Vltava River Basin. This doesn’t sound like it should really be news at all, ...
This week marks eighty years since the death of Mussolini on 28 April 1945. All the more surprising, then, that he is currently Italy’s reigning Man of the Year. The prestigious honor was bestowed by right-wing Italian newspaper Libero, which placed Musso’s image proudly on its front page on ...
When I was still a boy, there was a saying, now rather out of fashion, used by critics to blast politicians or other figures of authority whenever they had formulated yet another foolish policy, to the effect that “Next they’ll be wanting to bring back Hitler!” As Easter Sunday this year ...
How is it possible to “sexually harass” a statue? You’d have to ask Dublin City Council, who have just declared an innovative new experiment in protecting a supposedly “vulnerable” local sculpture from getting her bronze breasts rubbed for good luck by foreign tourists. By employing a ...
New figures demonstrate British people are far less likely to donate cash to charity than they once were. No wonder. I don’t know about you, but my idea of a charitable enterprise would be giving food to the starving or shelter to the homeless, not painting colored nails on firemen to make them ...
I must say I agree with Taki’s recent assertion on these pages that nobody reads anymore: It certainly explains my own books’ dismal sales figures. Further confirmation of this lamentable observation arrived in the shape of a March survey finding 40 percent of people in the U.K. had not read a ...
As a small child, one of my favorite cartoon characters was that brave sword-fighting shell-bearer Touché Turtle, whom I used to prance around the garden pretending to be, hitting other equally violent neighborhood kids with toy plastic blades as I went. It now transpires this habit made me ...
As I write these words, the Pope lies gravely ill in hospital, even less capable of breathing than George Floyd once was, and probably every bit as doped up. Perhaps Pope Francis will pull through—it wouldn’t be the first miraculous resurrection in Christian history—although given current ...
