Philip Hensher



Profile:
Full name: Philip Hensher

Area of interest: Arts, Culture, Society, Politics (esp. political intervention in Arts and Culture)

Journals/Organisation: The Independent | The Daily Telegraph

Email: [mailto:p.hensher@independent.co.uk p.hensher@independent.co.uk]

Personal website:

Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher

Blog:

Representation:

Networks: [http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher/philip-hensher-ive-given-up-twitter-should-you-follow-my-example-2345554.html ''Philip Hensher: I've given up Twitter. Should you follow my example?''] - The Independent, 29th August 2011



Biography:
About:

Education: Tapton School, Sheffield; Oxford University; Cambridge University: Eighteenth-century English painting and satire (PhD) Cambridge University: Eighteenth-century English painting and satire (PhD)

Career: House of Commons clerk: 1990/1996
 * Contemporarywriters.com: biography (British Council)

Current position/role: Commentator


 * also writes/has written for: Reviews and articles to The Spectator, Mail on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph, Granta and The Guardian

Other roles/Main role: Author; Associate Professor, University of Exeter - staff profiles: contact details / research interests / publications

Other activities: Wrote a libretto to Thomas Ades’s opera, Powder Her Face (1995), which has been performed internationally, recorded by EMI and filmed by Channel Four

Disclosures:

Viewpoints/Insight: Contemporarywriters.com: Critical perspective (British Council)

Broadcast media:

Video: Regular broadcaster
 * IMDb

Controversy/Criticism:

Awards/Honours:
 * Member of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature (made a Fellow in 1998)
 * Somerset Maugham Award (Kitchen Venom)
 * Journalist of the Year in the Stonewall Awards, 2007

Scoops:

Other: Listed as one of the hundred most influential LGBT people in Britain, 2006: Pink List, The Independent on Sunday, 2nd July 2006



Books & Debate:
✒ Philip's page at Amazon ✒
 * King of the badgers (2011) OCLC695008618
 * The northern clemency (2008) OCLC 183146398, (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize)
 * My dog Ian (2005) OCLC 64064743
 * Jack Milroy: doodling with intent (2005) OCLC 501332018 with AS Byatt
 * The fit (2004) OCLC 55999041
 * The Mulberry Empire (2002) OCLC 59421139
 * The bedroom of the mister’s wife (1999) OCLC 41310720
 * Pleasured (1998) OCLC 40170746
 * Kitchen venom (1996) OCLC 35030512 (winner of the Somerset Maugham award)
 * Other Lulus (1994) OCLC 30110587

Latest work: The Missing Ink. Macmillan, October 2012. Reviewed here by John Mullan in The Guardian

Speaking/Appearances:

Debate: 

Journals:

 * No regular column



Articles:

 * Drinking, brawling, mayhem. I loved the parties Philip Larkin called ‘hell on earth’ - You never knew what would happen next at an old-style literary gathering. Where else could you argue with Doris Lessing about underpants from M&S? - 2nd June 2015
 * The Hound of Hounslow has taken the lid off the suburbs’ hidden wild side - Navinder Singh Sarao’s supposed exploits are no surprise to those who know the strangeness that flourishes among the crazy paving and Japanese maples - 25th April 2015
 * Looking at your mobile? You’re cutting off a world of creativity – and flirtation - I agree with Simon Schama: looking upwards and outwards is the source of all art, thought and literature – and enables intimate encounters - 6th April 2015
 * Why Harper Lee remained silent for so many years - Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird and then remained silent for 55 years, Philip Hensher examines the trouble with being a literary heavyweight - 4th February 2015
 * The Moneychangers is cliched, lurid and utterly absorbing - Goodness knows why nobody took Arthur Hailey’s blockbuster away from me, but it taught my 11-year-old self to love novels - 12th August 2014
 * Mark Carney's World Cup analogies miss the target - Our thinking – even on interest rates – is contaminated by sporting ideals of victory, defeat and beating opponents - 18th May 2014
 * Michelangelo's snowman and other great lost works of art - The Gaugin and Bonnard paintings that surfaced this week can no longer be feverishly imagined - 5th April 2014
 * At last gay relationships can't be regarded as second-rate - For years, we've been subjected to the question 'but why do you want to get married?'. Now we can just be like anyone else - 29th March 2014
 * The return of BBC's Civilisation - The BBC is to remake 'Civilisation’, but is there a presenter today as good as the original, Kenneth Clark - 25th March 2014
 * Cool words that live and die by the tongue - Slang is the exciting, creative heart of language, where new terms fight for survival - 3rd March 2014
 * Real work is grist to a good novelist’s mill - Nathan Filer’s career in mental health added a depth of detail to his Costa-winning novel - 7th January 2014
 * This should be a golden age for readers, but it feels like the end of days - As technology makes book-reading a specialist activity, more should be done to keep literature at the heart of our national life - 4th January 2014
 * It takes more than law-making to shift cultural contempt towards gay people - Gay marriage is sanctioned from next year and legal protections are mostly in place, but it may take another generation for minds to slowly change - 13th December 2013
 * Why Paul Klee was a comic at heart - Comedy is at the heart of Klee's work – from joyously splodgy lines to grotesqueries that poke fun at dictators - 7th October 2013
 * The bigger a community gets, the easier and more virulent anonymity becomes - The possibility, and the dangers, of anonymity started to become apparent long before we all went online, and both have only continued to grow - 24th August 2013
 * There’s nothing out of date about duty - The claim that novels – and society – are now all about selfishness is a gross misreading - 9th August 2013
 * Britain without Margaret Thatcher - What if Margaret Thatcher had not fought and won the general election in 1979? What would the 80s have been like without the Falklands war, the miners' strike and privatisation? - 10th April 2013
 * Pride and Prejudice: a love story centuries old, but eternally fresh - As it turns 200, Jane Austen’s most famous work is universally acknowledged as the most perfectly satisfying of novels - 30th December 2012
 * Writers who leave their wives lost for words - Ian Rankin's wife has confirmed that at times novelists are more interested in their creations than the people living with them - 2nd November 2012
 * Leave the apostrophe alone – it makes sense - We should be more possessive about our punctuation, whatever 'Waterstones’ thinks - 13th January 2012
 * The Brontë sisters are always our contemporaries - The madness of Wuthering Heights seems exactly right for societies that find themselves contemplating the abyss - 13th November 2011
 * Jackie Kennedy-Onassis finds a voice - Seventeen years after her Jackie Onassis's death, one of the true icons of the 20th century still has the ability to shock America - 15th September 2011
 * authors who are first among sequels'' - Some writers are more popular than others when it comes to unfinished literary busines - 14th January 2011
 * Palin's struggle with English language'' - Sarah Palin's 'refudiate' was a shocker, but Shakespeare and Carroll were at it too - 21st July 2010
 * the end of the day, a cliché has its uses'' - One writer's hackneyed horror may be a source of delight for others - 1st June 2010
 * by the Butchers of Broadway'' - As a British play closes in New York thanks to a single review, Philip Hensher asks why US critics are so resistant to our artistic charms - 17th May 2010
 * up with a good e-book?'' - Digital books will transform the world of publishing. Who now will be the true guardians of literary merit - 17th December 2009
 * McCarthy's typewriter: A writer and his tools are seldom parted'' - Once they find a favourite way of getting their words on paper - or screen - novelists normally stick with it - 3rd December 2009



The Independent:
Column name:

Remit/Info: Arts, Culture, Society, Politics (esp. political intervention in Arts and Culture)

Section:

Role: Commentator

Pen-name:

Email: [mailto:p.hensher@independent.co.uk p.hensher@independent.co.uk]

Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher

Commissioning editor:

Day published:

Regularity: Weekly

Column format:

Average length:



Articles: 2013

 * Concerned about gay rights at the Sochi Winter Olympics? Just get boycotting - Boycotts are not the answer, said Lord Coe, who pointed out that his attendance at the 1980 Moscow Olympics led, 10 years later, to the fall of the Berlin Wall - 12th August
 * We have all the time in the world for Wagner - The audiences for this immense work ought to be disappearing. In fact, they're growing - 27th July
 * A heritage in Bangadeshi politics, a future in British? - The grandfather of Tulip Siddiq founded Bangladesh. Ms Siddiq's progress in her run for parliament is worth watching carefully - 20th July
 * Tinker, tailor, typewriter, spy – the old ways work - 13th July
 * As long as reading survives, so will bookshops - The small independent bookshop has been one of the great joys of my life, and its slow disappearance a great sadness - 6th July
 * Seduced by the fedora, turned off by the trilby – a man’s hat can tell you a lot about his art - Famous hat-wearers, the painter L S Lowry and the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen might seem strange bedfellows, but it's what's under that tifter that really counts - 29th June
 * We’re on a journey full-circle back to O-levels - Michael Gove's reforms, which will stretch the brightest students, are long overdue - 15th June
 * Patrick Mercer: An everyday story of deception in Parliament - Mr Mercer denies taking payment for performance of his parliamentary duties, but is under investigation - 8th June
 * Finally, the French have their mot juste - All languages have their gaps. But how did it take so long for France to catch up with "French kissing"? - 1st June
 * The Holocaust can’t be a joke – least of all in Berlin - I confronted one group raising havoc in the Monument to the Murdered Jews - 25th May
 * The Oxford sex ring shows how the sexual manners of a new place can be tragically misinterpreted - What drove these men was deracination: a detachment from one culture, and a failure to attach or understand another. They believed they could get away with it - 18th May
 * September babies have an advantage in education - and that's just the way schools like it - What these findings really indicate is how much education – and the testing of achievement – has been run by institutions for the benefit of institutions - 11th May
 * Value for money? The arts have nothing to fear - It makes money; it develops projects; it creates high earners, as well as employing large numbers of dedicated people who work for almost nothing - 27th April
 * The rich have a duty to spend extravagantly - I take my hat off to the lottery winners who decided to splash their cash around - 20th April
 * Hear that? From Adele to Mantel, 2013 has been played out to the sound of women rising - We have come a long way since days when nobody would buy a girl band's records - 13th April
 * The joy of the Rijksmuseum: A museum mustn’t be afraid of being boring - Museums are about more than plunging you into a holistic version of the past - 6th April
 * Do we really want pop stars from public school? - Music has been affected by a political conspiracy that assumes that the creative arts are just for the rich or the posh - 30th March
 * Laugh at Cardinal Keith O'Brien, but not his victims - 23rd March
 * It’s a miracle that any opera ever gets performed - Opera is an extraordinary thing, and its triumphs rest, like no other art form, on the physical and musical capacities of very rare individuals - 16th March
 * Google Glass complainers are concerned about the loss of privacy. Isn't it a bit late for that? - 9th March
 * As Iceland says no to pornography, will the rest of us follow? - Iceland’s interior minister is drafting legislation to stop access of online porn through computers, consoles and smartphones - 2nd March
 * University for the over 60s? It should be available at any age - David Willets has said that higher education can benefit an older generation in the workplace, but there are better reasons than that one might want to enrol - 23rd February
 * Oscar Pistorius: Look up to anyone – just not sportsmen - Tell your children to admire their dentist, their teacher, a lawyer, even a banker - 16th February
 * Why don’t more politicians wax poetical like Winston Churchill? - There are one or two who would probably contribute to the public good much more effectively by writing poetry - 9th February
 * Equal marriage: We've come a long way, and in 20 years' time we won't recall what the fuss was about - There is still stigma and shame, but this step says you're allowed to fall in love with whomever you like - no matter their gender or your own - 6th February
 * David Beckham's move to Paris is a chance to reflect on the modern ease of international travel - 2nd February
 * Disagree with me, sure. But don't wish me dead - Our writer suffered threats of violence and sustained abuse after writing about disability benefits. Here he reflects on the phenomenon of online hate campaigns - 24th January
 * Some people on disability benefits are fit to work - If a proper assessment by professionals could be carried out – not a questionnaire, just a doctor’s sense of the possible – then we might have fewer tragedies - 19th January
 * One just knows when a onesie is not for one - as Nick Clegg would do well to remember - 12th January



Articles: 2012

 * Granta's once-a-decade list of rising novelists is more important than ever - 21st December
 * Instagram: When do my pictures become their property? - The question has grown much more heated with the advent of the internet - 22nd December
 * Our last chance to save the British high street - The high street has been changing for a long time, but it's not too late to appreciate it again - 15th December
 * Only fools are impressed by parental connections, but they're important on Ucas forms - Plus: Why all the fuss about the Picturehouse buyout when our rich tapestry of cinemas is in tatters? - 8th December
 * If Daniel Day-Lewis can do Spielberg's Lincoln, why can't we have 'Lord Salisbury: the Musical'? - We like to think of ourselves as intensely engaged with history. If that's true, what happened to the British drama of political life? Also, the imperial legacy to gays - 1st December
 * I went to France as a student. Now I’d choose Kolkata - One student from England has already enrolled in an Indian university - and you can bet that many more will follow in future - 23rd November
 * The avant-garde lives on. Just listen to Dizzee Rascal - The most extraordinary innovations in music may never be to the taste of millions, but they are nonetheless part of our collective imagination -10th November
 * Hurricane Sandy: Ever wondered what it’ll be like when the money and oil run out? - Hurricane Sandy has shown New York a glimpse of life without water or power - and it's split the city in two - 3rd November
 * Two drama teachers were sacked for play where students acted out sexual abuse - but drama is meant to shock - Drama is meant to challenge actors and audiences - the teenagers were acting - 27th October
 * Stay out of hospitality if you won’t serve gays - The BNP use of the term "privacy" is an attempt to twist a proper value to improper ends. Particular personal beliefs are, in practice, incompatible with particular jobs - 20th October
 * Invoke the Nazis and you’ve lost the argument - Peter Carey's reference to the Third Reich in the context of gay marriage was a fabulous example of Godwin's law - 13th October
 * Let's celebrate the Beatles by banning them - Pop music is made for a particular time and moment, extending its life-span indefinitely only crowds the market and diminishes the original listening experience - 6th October
 * Note to publishers: even authors have to eat - Notebook: How The Casual Vacancy could change publishing and why, thanks to Channel 4, we need a respectable new name for MDMA - 29th September
 * Have the Greeks lost their marbles (again)? - Selling off Greek state property is a desperate measure that isn't going to meet debtor's demands or solve the country's terrible problems - 22nd September
 * Boning up is the best way to learn history - Was Richard III a graceful king or malevolent hunchback? As archaeologists dig up what might be his remains, we are moving closer to the truth - 14th September
 * Long Live The Geeks! - Kids don't think reading is cool and only three in ten read on their own initiative. But who wants to be "cool" anyway? - 8th September
 * Zadie Smith: Novelists never tire of lighting up the Smoke - There are endless songs about Paris, endless films about New York, but London is the city, above all, of fiction - 2nd September
 * Abolish all grades. Only then will GCSEs be useful for pupils and employers - Grades should be abolished, and a transcript of marks published - 25th August
 * The other railway scandal - there are too many workers who are paid to do nothing - The train companies now receive much more money from taxpayers than they did when they were owned by the state, and are still producing services which are late, overcrowded, far more expensive both to run and to use than European services - 18th August
 * Something is wrong when so many have to conceal their sexuality - The first major sportsperson who comes out at the peak of his or her career is going to be a hero - 11th August
 * Mrs T proves nothing evokes a political era like the clothes leaders wear - People used to go on about the Handbag. But for me it was all about the pussy-bow collar - 4th August
 * I don't blame Blair for his delusions. But it'll do him no favours to indulge them - Is Tony Blair thinking of a comeback in British politics? "I'd like to find a form of intervening in politics," he told Charles Moore the other day. What might this form of intervention be? - 28th July
 * Only Jeremy Kyle believes in lie detector tests. Oh, and the Government - Most psychologists who have looked into it regard the polygraph's measuring of blood pressure and perspiration as pseudoscience - 21st July
 * The postcode lottery of drug-related deaths - Probably on the same day another woman was killed in the same way as Eva Rausing - 14th July
 * I only scraped my O-levels but Gove is right - What we want is an education system which recognises the huge disparity in achievement - 23rd June
 * Danny Boyle and the myth of country life - It is strange, considering how urban our lives have long been, that our fantasies about an ideal existence remain rural - 16th June
 * The white elephant saved? Pigs might fly - I see Battersea Power Station every day, and, even in its dilapidated state, it never fails to raise the spirits - 9th June
 * Some things are more important than sport - The significance of sports has a limit, and beyond that there ought to be something called humanity - 2nd June
 * Why should this lot get rich at my expense? - Britain is alone in Europe in maintaining free banking – or "free banking", as one ought to call it - 26th May
 * Will nobody mourn the death of classical music? - There's probably no noise which gives me more pleasure than the first two bars of Beethoven 7 - 19th May
 * It's tough to sack a civil servant (I should know) - The number of civil servants has, interestingly, dropped very substantially under the Coalition - 12th May
 * There are some crime stories that will never reveal their ending - The urges of narrative have their own place. But life does not always conform to its structures - 5th May
 * The spies who failed to notice a dead co-worker - You would expect a faster response to a disappearance if you worked on a till at Tesco - 28th April
 * Do you think people can be 'cured' of their sexuality through prayer? Get over it! - The idea that anyone can be "cured" of their sexuality through prayer or psychiatric treatment is thoroughly discredited - 14th April
 * A politician's wealth is fascinating, but it's not necessarily our business - How gripping it would be to discover how much one’s friends and enemies made last year - 7th April
 * The Swedes have the right idea on binge drinking - The authorities should deny all supermarkets an alcohol licence. Let it be sold through specialist outlets - 24th March
 * Against gay marriage? Too late, it's already here - I don’t know a single person in a civil partnership who doesn’t refer to themselves as being married - 17th March
 * Is it a castle – or is it just a source of capital? - The mansion tax strikes hard at something close to the English heart. Houses are extensions of the self - 10th March
 * We turn up our music to cover the screams - The horrible thing about the murder of 15-year-old Kristy Bamu is that so many people were aware of it as it took its four-day course
 * Of Blackadder and white women of a certain age - There are voices out there which traditional media neglect through their age, ethnicity, culture, sexuality - 24th February
 * All very well in a gallery, but can you imagine living with the icon of urban depression? - A City acquaintance had a Damien Hirst medicine cabinet, to the occasional confusion of his guests - 22nd February
 * Gatsby: a story that suits our age - F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel dissecting 1920s America is being filmed again and adapted for several stage productions. Why now? - 12th February
 * Do you want an experience or just to film it? - Sarah Millican is right. It's theft, as much as if you went into Waterstones and photocopied a new novel - 10th February
 * My solution to the Falklands problem: sell them - I doubt we have much stomach for another war in the south Atlantic. And we need the money - 3rd February
 * Sergei Polunin and a lesson for Labour - Institutions need stars, and stars don't necessarily like institutions - 27th January
 * Rejecting Oxbridge isn't clever – it's a mistake - It is a great shame if brilliant young people think Oxford is just a posh place with impractical architecture - 20th January
 * Genius is just a matter of taste - Hockney is a fascinating but quirky artist. Some will think his show is horrible - 16th January



Articles: 2011

 * A warship in the Thames is taking security too far - Warships? Surface-to-air missiles? An army of 42,000? Wellington only needed 68,000 at Waterloo - 29th December
 * Why didn't they steal those halfwits at St Pancras? - You can value the bronze in a Hepworth, but how are you going to price up the holes, the gap, the shining aura? - 22nd December
 * Google shows us who we really are. It's not pretty - Is this what every great liberation of information discovers: the base aspect of human nature triumphs? - 16th December
 * Universities need cash – but not just anyone's - When an institution gains a gleaming new wing, we should ask what abasements have occurred - 2nd December
 * The state wants to know what you're up to. But why do we let it? - What drives the spread of surveilliance is not a desire to diminish evil, but the desire to control - 17th November
 * Shakespeare, salaries – and inequality - Poverty has no place in our society. But how will reducing chief execs’ pay help? - 29th October
 * Werritty had a priceless commodity - Liam Fox shows that Access is no kind of basis for government to be transacted - 15th October
 * Embrace your inner weirdo, Ed - Let's not pretend that any politicians are remotely normal - 3rd October
 * Assange believes in two types of truth - On WikiLeaks' own principles, publication of Julian Assange's memoir without his permission would be justified24th September
 * We must save Roal Dahl's writing hut - Money spent on saving a great writer's habitat is money well spent - 18th September
 * Decline and fall - the world envisaged in chaos theory is now with us - Poor countries are helped out by rich countries. And what happens when rich countries, through their munificence, become poor countries? - 17th September
 * The countryside is an illusion - We assume most newly-built houses are an abomination. But it need not be so - 5th September
 * Supple's plays trip off the tongues - The week in culture: Whenever the Edinburgh festival rolls round, one of the most curious phenomena is, surely, the taste for theatre in a foreign language - 2nd September
 * given up Twitter. Should you follow my example?'' - Social media are not a conversation. Nor are they a publication. They may not even be something in between. They may very well be something entirely new - 29th August
 * given up Twitter. Should you follow my example'' - Social media are not a conversation. Nor are they a publication. They may not even be something in between. They may very well be something entirely new - 29th August
 * doesn't want to dominate Europe – that is part of the problem'' - In every respect, German culture remains unfamiliar to the British - 20th August
 * a bleeding-heart liberal - so, what am I to make of these sickening scenes?'' - Unlike the riots of 30 years ago, actions last week had no clear explanation. And that's a real challenge for the chattering classes - 14th August
 * places mean more to us now'' - You don’t need to be a historian to empathise with the plight of Syrians - 13th August
 * the book at the wrecking crew'' - Waterstone's in the Clapham Junction precinct was not attacked by rioters - 12th August
 * billions, trillions...We lack the imagination to grasp these sums'' - People don't understand what big money is at all. We have so few opportunities to understand it without living through the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany - 6th August
 * different class of literature'' - The week in culture: With the death of Stan Barstow, a distinctive and important part of English fiction comes to an end - 5th August
 * last – a public figure who refuses to deny their past'' - Louise Mensch’s response is the sight of a strong-minded person - 1st August
 * a menacing world, we flee into thrillers'' - Dominating both the Booker Prize longlist and the bestseller charts, the thriller has become society's favourite means of escape - 30th July
 * common coinage could be the undoing of all that unites Europe'' - A shared money suddenly seems a weak bond. What started as a brave partnership starts to look like an over-ambitious dog-walker’s outing - 23rd July
 * not just the noise – it's the people'' - These days, if people do something, they insist on their right to do it - 16th July
 * takes you to places that life can't'' - It takes a novelist, not a psychologist, to explain why people act out of character - 9th July
 * III and the lost art of creating truly wicked villains'' - Today's authors are too full of human sympathy to create the truly dastardly evildoers of yore - 3rd July
 * Gay Pride still matters'' - Violence against gay people is on the increase, and there is an undeniable culture of homophobia in the media - 2nd July
 * a performance just to enter the UK'' - The week in culture: For centuries, the life of the arts has depended on the occasional shot in the arm delivered by glamorous visitors. When Handel, Mozart or Haydn turned up in London in the 18th century, the result was a huge new public audience for music - 1st July
 * us won't change our behaviour'' - It defies common sense that a man of 65 risks his health by having a daily pint - 25th June
 * is the new modesty'' - If you pick up the newspapers, read a random blog, watch the television, you won’t have to wait long before somebody offers up part of their life for your admiration - 19th June
 * Christianity meets politics'' - Mitre or no mitre, the Archbishop's views have no privileged position - 11th June
 * plague in our cashmere-filled closets'' - A friend said casually, 'You've got a hole in that sweater'. I looked, and it was so - 4th June
 * should cherish all accents'' - Cheryl Cole is returning home, defeated by those who couldn’t understand her - 28th May
 * all his dazzling genius, Philip Roth still leaves me cold'' - Philip Roth may be the greatest living master of the novel, but sometimes it takes more than mastery to win us over - 22nd May
 * evil a no-go area for the imagination?'' - Lars von Trier is a film director who is drawn to extreme states - 21st May
 * lessons for the e-generation'' - This season’s technological advancement will be unusable in 15 years’ time - 14th May
 * extraordinary legacy of goodness'' - Even in extreme circumstances people turn out to be modest, generous and thoughtful - 7th May
 * of behaviour that vex us all'' - One of the familiar errors in literary dialogue lies in the use of the word "Dear" as a vocative - 30th April
 * masque would live in the memory'' - Years after the fact, what survives of these great royal occasions are the sideshows. What must have seemed, during the festivities, something to tickle the onlookers and fill a few hours between parties comes in time to seem the thing which lasts - 29th April
 * home cooking than foam cooking'' - About five years ago, an Argentinian steak house opened just round the corner from us in Battersea - 23rd April
 * in public is not a universal right'' - Not so long ago, it was not uncommon to make requests of people to modify their behaviour, if it was intruding on you - 16th April
 * a trip to Spain is a piece of theatre'' - An air of dreamy strangeness hangs over the PM's descent into ordinariness - 9th April
 * we finally growing out of the whole lunacy of royal weddings?'' - Perhaps we have got to the point where deference and admiration are offered to people who have actually earned them - 2nd April
 * you've got it, give some of it away'' - How many Premier League footballers give regularly to institutions? - 26th March
 * books a year is ideal...'' - ... but why stop at schoolchildren? - 23rd March
 * portrait of us as we see ourselves'' - The census was never going to have an easy ride, this time round - 12th March
 * rock star could provide as much glamour as a prince'' - The element that attracts the punters is not possessed exclusively by royalty - 8th March
 * and disrespectful – but illegal?'' - You can never predict where laws on desecration will fall most heavily - 26th February
 * in the enchanted forest, a very English sensibility has stirred'' - Forests are places of dapplement, of light and shade. At the back of everything is Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, turning the social hierarchy upside down - 19th February
 * University debate: There's more than one way to learn'' - Going up to Oxford taught the novelist Philip Hensher life's possibilities. Going straight into employment gave the entrepreneur Simon Dolan a head start at work. So who had the advantage? - 18th February
 * stay at home for the best education?'' - Are we, in general, stick-in-the-muds? Do students hate abroad, or something? - 12th February
 * has fallen to the bankers'' - The steady flow of young people into Berlin has become a torrent. The city’s purpose is vanishing - 5th February
 * alone, even when we're together'' - The curious thing is that these devices, which isolate users so effectively from the world around them, are often propagated as a means of social connection - 29th January
 * the British just too phlegmatic?'' - When a train in India was 23 minutes late, it caused violent protest - 15th January



Articles: 2010

 * of us knew Pooky would be famous one day'' - University produced conspicuous figures, whose future we took for granted - 28th December
 * bubble has to burst eventually'' - The market in all sorts of things is moving eastwards, but few so fascinatingly as the market in vintage wines - 23rd December
 * puts us all on a stage. Is that why we've come to dread it?'' - Somewhere in one of Elizabeth Taylor's novels, a character makes the cardinal error of alluding, casually, to Christmas in the middle of November. "Oh, don't," her friend responds with, Taylor says, "all the English dread Christmas" - 18th December
 * worrying – the kids will be all right'' - Sooner or later, kids are going to say 'sod it' and invent their own adventures - 11th December
 * – an insult that's had its day'' - There are plenty of openly Conservative people who go round boldly calling themselves "Thatcherite" - 4th December 2010
 * you say good morning in Bengali?'' - Even if we learn Mandarin to negotiate over bulk prices for widgets rather than read the poetry of Li Po, the humanising influence will make itself known - 27th November
 * couple's happiness will not translate into national self-esteem'' - The unavoidable notion that a royal wedding is somehow related to the mood of the nation is impossible to date back beyond the late 19th century - 20th November
 * expect the authorities to get the joke'' - This might have been funny, if anyone involved had shown any judgement - 13th November
 * too much information, Google'' - In Britain, Street View seemed like a fairly innocuous photographic map. To the rest of Europe it was considered a gross invasion of privacy - 6th November
 * monarchs made for Hollywood'' - Recent films about royalty have emphasised the dullness of their lives - 25th October
 * modern art is a matter of experience'' - Many visitors hardly care whether it is art or not, so long as it's fun - 18th October
 * objects of my affection'' - I knew this was going to be good when, quite early on, I learnt from this radio series how to pronounce 'metope' - 15th October
 * rights, in the Chinese sense'' - It was an undeniably bad week for the Chinese government - 11th October
 * dark side of surveillance'' - Students of thirty years ago didn't film each other’s sexual misbehaviour - 4th October
 * gay in the village? Not quite'' - Frankly, it’s the Don’t Knows in this doorstep survey that I wonder about - 27th September
 * joy of living in a phone-free world'' - Let’s not make surveillance seem normal by incorporating it in to our social lives - 20th September
 * at last – but to what purpose?'' - This conference will be fascinating. From the floor will arise endless complaint at the terrible fact that their party is in government - 18th September
 * leads screen in a gender agenda'' - Theatre has been much bolder than cinema in casting against convention - 13th September
 * egging tradition under threat'' - You could do some damage with a shoe, but an egg only causes loss of dignity - 6th September
 * will hold the RSPCA to account?'' - If Ms Bale committed a crime against a cat, let the police prosecute her - 30th August
 * key to a good party is to forget it'' - David Miliband is slowly revealing his brilliant gift for embarrassing behaviour - 23rd August
 * isn’t right for everyone'' - The next generation may learn a lesson, and choose a different path - 16th August
 * more to marriage than you think'' - Understanding of marriage has altered over time and across cultures - 14th August
 * still making perfect progress'' - The week in culture - 13th August
 * can’t have the last word'' - Fans of that movie classic, Mean Girls, will remember Gretchen’s unsuccessful efforts to introduce a new word - 9th August
 * of art are not child's play'' - There's no such thing as a slump in art sales, it seems, for some artists - 6th August
 * hear it for the traffic warden'' - 2nd August
 * need not be the hardest word'' - In Northern Ireland young offenders can choose to meet with their victims - 26th July
 * short can a short story be?'' - In the age of Twitter 10-word stories require a very slow reader - 19th July
 * little Toniblers set a fine example'' -Blair is such a hero to Kosovan families that some name their sons after him - 12th July
 * more to gay stereotyping than Kylie. So here's my guide...'' - One of the curious things about gay male society, as glimpsed from the world of the heterosexual, is that it gets represented by marginal and rather outdated images - 10th July
 * choice reads like a fairy-tale'' - Adult readers are including juvenile works in their reading matter - 28th June
 * ça change for the Mr Gradgrinds'' - What use is conversation? Or friendship? What function does the enjoyment of art or literature serve? - 20th June
 * TV isn’t a minority interest'' - Ofcom say that “loony”, “nutter”, “poof” and “queer” are fine at any time of day - 14th June
 * soon to call time on a vintage show'' - After 37 years, Last Of The Summer Wine has come to an end - 7th June
 * was secrecy, not privacy, that Laws wanted'' - Remember, the Lib Dems are a party with no ethnic minority MPs - 31st May
 * 'comedy' of my All Souls exam'' - I’d like to know that there was still some home for mad old farts in the world - 24th May
 * as simple as holding hands'' - A London man, Dave Watkins, noticed that many gay people, perfectly happy and open in all other parts of their lives, preferred to walk through the streets anonymously - 17th May
 * hear it for ‘baggage-handling’'' - 10th May
 * the panel hoped to surprise: we even included two painters'' - "Well," a journalist and art-world insider said to me, slightly reprovingly. We were at the breakfast to announce the shortlist for this year's Turner Prize, which I've been judging this year. "Normally I manage to guess at least one artist in advance." I apologised: but secretly I felt rather pleased - 5th May
 * have given up on the gay vote'' - No party has its hands completely clean in this area- 3rd May
 * least make use of the Papal visit'' - He will meet no gays, no single mothers, no one who doesn’t believe in God - 26th April
 * few more ruins is just what we need'' - David Cameron launched his party's manifesto at Battersea Power Station the other day - 15th April
 * start counting the cost of health'' - Why didn't I know how much my medicine actually costs the NHS? - 5th April
 * that I didn't even have to pay for'' - It was a noble gesture to make this marvellous Kobke exhibition free - 29th March
 * Austen would never win the Booker'' - The ambitious novel with a regard for humour is not dead, but is beleaguered - 22nd March
 * can be golden in our critical world'' - Audiences seem to be demanding more rights: to applaud, shriek and interrupt - 15th March
 * don't we put animals on trial?'' - Pre-modern justice did not limit its attentions to human beings - 8th March
 * eternal wonder of Alice in Wonderland'' - Spirited and suspicious of authority, Lewis Carroll's greatest creation has much to teach us today - 2nd March
 * waste of time that is careers advice'' - Even now, children of doctors become doctors, and children of manual labourers become manual labourers - 1st March
 * is a waste of NHS money'' - We don't object to people spending their healthcare money on anything they choose - 22nd February
 * have a right to know BBC salaries'' - If you work for the BBC, you are, like a lottery winner, allowed to tick the "no publicity" box - 15th February
 * guests always eat the weirdest meat'' - Unlike the Chancellor, I'd have leapt at the chance of eating seal - 8th February
 * legacy may lie in ashes'' - The last time J D Salinger made a considered, edited literary statement was in 1965. It was a long and bizarre short story, called "Hapworth 16, 1924" - 1st February
 * news made worse in the telling'' - Friends and family were astonished to read in La Nazione an interview with Guido - 25th January
 * book 'deal' has left me confused'' - I don't like the idea of someone fiddling with my ownership of my own books - 18th January
 * lessons learnt at the double bass'' - The Festival of British Youth Orchestras has been cancelled this year for lack of funds. It takes place every August in Edinburgh. It's had some problems recently in fulfilling its remit – it's become overwhelmingly a festival of Scottish youth orchestras, last year attracting only one orchestra from elsewhere in Britain - 11th January
 * laws can only invite trouble'' - None of us likes being insulted, but only a priest seeks to pass a law against it - 4th January



Articles: 2009

 * day for a land with no name'' - This month, the southern half of Sudan moved closer to independence. The ruling party in Khartoum and the former rebels in the south agreed terms for a referendum, to be held in 2011. Nobody thinks that the result is likely to result in anything but a vote for independence. But one issue hasn't been resolved, as far as I know. What will the new country be called? - 28th December
 * death and the BBC licence fee'' - Well, how would you feel? An organisation which you pay a three-figure sum to, every year, decides that it is going to spend some of that money on debating whether you should be executed or not - 21st December
 * looks this cheap because it cost so much'' - Misguidedly, I took a seat in the front row of the preview theatre to see Where the Wild Things Are - 14th December
 * of the Library Stinker are numbered'' - There's always been a gruesome whiffer in every library - 7th December
 * the critics' sober judgements'' - The Persians, according to some ancient historians, made decisions twice: once when they were drunk, and again when they were sober. According to the playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, the theatre critics who have just panned her new play about Degas only half-followed this practice and forgot the sober part - 30th November
 * that can be a boon to Cameron'' - The expenses scandal too will be seen as a helpful winnowing exercise - 23rd November
 * have a lot to learn about grammar'' - We're all getting, I fear, a computerised reading device for Christmas, allowing us to read the complete works of dozens of novelists through the magic of a seven-by-four screen. What happens if the logical conclusion is reached, and the computer takes to reading what we write, and judging it, too? - 16th November
 * but that was in another country'' - A great wall rises up between us and what we remember - 9th November
 * students should learn about learning'' - The "consumer revolution" in universities continues apace, and tomorrow a paper will be published by Lord Mandelson setting out the detailed public information universities must provide - 2nd November
 * death triumphs over the writer's art'' - For 30 years, a famous bundle of 138 index cards has remained in a Swiss bank vault. Famous, but seen by hardly anybody. The novel that Vladimir Nabokov was working on at the time of his death, The Original of Laura, was preserved by his family against his apparent wishes to have it destroyed if he died with it unfinished - 26th October
 * the world through hipsters' eyes'' - The fashion trend is easier to spot than any trend in the art on display - 19th October
 * things should stay in the hinterland'' - Buchan's career as a politician-writer now seems impossible to emulate - 12th October
 * Cameron dilemma for impressionists'' - Our respectable, well-scrubbed politicians have cartoonists in despair - 5th October
 * by foreign tongues'' - What was the BBC doing, sending a reporter who can't speak German? - 1st October
 * art of death on a mass scale'' - At any period in history, the Aztecs' customs would have been regarded as abhorrent - 28th September
 * for Arlene is pure dumbing down'' - Would the BBC broadcast football with commentary by Nigella Lawson? - 21st September
 * best way to apologise to Alan Turing'' - What happened to Turing is happening all the time all over the world - 14th September
 * the BNP sit with the grown-ups?'' - The BBC must respect free speech, but free speech is limited by law - 7th September
 * deadliest rivalry lurks in literary festivals'' - Some writers treat them as a brute Darwinian struggle for survival - 31st August
 * war of the Great Scented Candle Divide'' - When a widely practised social custom is discovered to be bad for you, there will be some shock and resentment. The habit of creating small fires in our own homes, polluting the air we breathe, doesn't sound like an obviously healthy or sensible idea - 24th August
 * Reader's Digest ruled'' - The last time I saw it was in a dentist's waiting room - 21st August
 * we need is a certificate for toaster use'' - When Bobby McHale, a 15-year-old from Bury, went on a Bury and Rochdale Active Generation summer school, he was hoping to be taught new skills and be given new challenges. He didn't realise that the educational scheme was keeping such a close eye on his achievements. A while after returning, Bobby got a certificate, issued by an examination board, for one aspect of the scheme - 17th August
 * mysteries of humanity know no end'' - There doesn't seem to be a clear evolutionary advantage in acting unselfishly - 10th August
 * free offers that deserve to be spurned'' - A Japanese couple, on holiday in Rome, went into quite a nice-looking restaurant. They ordered pasta, fish, and ice cream and a bottle of sauvignon blanc - 3rd August
 * it comes to loos, Japan's are the business'' - Going to the lavatory in Japan is a perfect delight - 29th July
 * losing the war against drunken Brits'' - The English go abroad to drink, often to take drugs, and to have as much sex as possible - 20th July
 * in the classroom is a two-way affair'' - A story in which a teacher is alleged to have struck a 14-year-old boy with a heavy weight, leading to his hospitalisation and a charge of attempted murder may seem to be a clear-cut one. Things, however, are not necessarily so straightforward, and a horrible story has more than one aspect - 13th July
 * about a 'cure' for homosexuality'' - It grows increasingly hard to tell the difference between bishops of the Church of England and Paris Hilton - 6th July
 * ugly cost of a sexy new look'' - The fashion industry has only a limited interest in difference - 29th June
 * pain like having to get rid of books'' - 22nd June
 * art and the 'sausage sword' debate'' - Vladimir Putin was paying a visit to one of the best-known of Russian painters, Ilya Glazunov, the other day. All was going well, until he ventured away from the usual exchanges of civility between artists and rulers, and suddenly, and quite rudely, remarked of a painting of a medieval knight: "That sword's too short. It's only good to cut sausage." - 15th June
 * should not just be for girls'' - Men are being disadvantaged through a shift in emphasis - 8th June
 * high time we had a new government'' - When Damian Green, the shadow Immigration minister, was apprehended by police and questioned about the leak of government documents, attention was focused on him. The constitutional outrage of the police entering the Palace of Westminster and trying to arrest an opposition spokesman for efficiently doing his job appeared the most important aspect of the case - 11th May
 * Laureate's poems are all that matter'' - 4th May
 * celebrate oysters and asparagus'' - The last weekend of April could be Seasonal Food Weekend - 27th April
 * worked in Venezuela won't do so here'' - Their fortissimo is exhilarating, like a stiff gale on a mountain top - 20th April
 * are being wrecked by piped music'' - At the Victoria and Albert Museum's new Baroque show, I was trying to concentrate on what might strike some people as an unnecessarily complicated object when, quite suddenly, the band struck up above my head - 13th April
 * would we do without Dame Viv?'' - The developing depression in the global economy is having many disastrous effects. But surely one of the lesser ones is that the inhabitants of Moscow are no longer going to be able to buy the mini-crini, the ripped pirate-style jacket, the safety-pinned T-shirt or any other of Vivienne Westwood's creations - 6th April
 * anyone really understand the National Curriculum?'' - Teachers must live in dread of the man from the ministry making a visit - 3rd April
 * with the outer limits of language'' - Language is interesting not just when it is exotic and static, but when it is in the process of development - 30th March
 * us a nice day out and we're happy'' - The principle of the Nice Day Out is, for middle-class English people, so ingrained in their cultural existence that we have a tendency to think the habit universal - 23rd March
 * a fast track to joined-up thinking'' - Jargon is how the professions like to distinguish themselves - 19th March
 * who think they can do no wrong'' - Education can't avoid making children feel bad from time to time - 16th March
 * legend of Arthur must leave no legacy'' - Scargill's account of the 1984 strike, published over the weekend, is a statement of quite astonishing self-delusion - 9th March 2009
 * sharp they've cut themselves'' - Tragic news from the coalface. Arts administrators for Arts Council England (ACE) are facing a grim future as their traditional occupations have been declared to be no longer economic - 2nd March
 * ambitious author and a banned book'' - Not every culture in the world has our freedom of publication - 23rd February
 * there, done that is our dilemma'' - Where on earth do people go for their honeymoon these days, now that everyone's been everywhere already? - 16th February
 * is beautiful, but never perfect'' - Wikipedia is surely one of the most brilliant ideas of the century so far. Starting with a blank sheet on 15 January, 2001, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales invited internet users to write an online encyclopedia of unlimited scope, without supervisory editing. The users would write, debate, edit, and supplement the individual entries - 9th February
 * Wendy, but we need to keep the Poet Laureate'' - Wendy Cope has a curious sideline to her career as a likeable poet. It consists of denying that she has any intention of becoming Poet Laureate - 2nd February
 * BBC is too impartial to suffering'' - The trouble is that the BBC's requirement for impartiality has enabled it, yet again, to do nothing. Yet that inactivity does not have a neutral result - 26th January
 * religious find a friend in the law'' - Now people of religious beliefs think it perfectly all right to hawk their consciences round the country until they find a sympathetically minded director of a complaints agency or head of an employment tribunal - 12th January
 * Dickens and Palin. Discuss'' - Michael Palin is a kindly and intelligent soul, but one thing I doubt he would ever claim to be is a pillar of English literature - 5th January
 * titles? It's fine by me'' - A new novel by Sarah Waters is always going to cause great excitement - 2nd January

Articles: 2008

 * internet fix: use crystals'' - What happens if all those invisible ray jobbies are broadcasting straight into your chakras? - 29th December 2008
 * hatred will not defeat love'' - On the one hand, there are those who struggle to save the rainforests, with all their diversity, complexity and life. On the other, there are those who fight to oppress and erase that familiar and omnipresent human quirk known as homosexuality - 24th December 2008
 * I be Nigella's friend?'' - Nigella's friends are a glimpse of a glorious future - 22nd December 2008
 * not giving in to the BBC's hired thugs'' - The TV Licensing letters are arrogant, bullying and quite dishonest - 15th December 2008
 * save the review (and the reviewer)'' - Newspapers are going through a period of change, no one can doubt that. Under the pressure of the internet and its myriad contributors, the purpose of pages of criticism seems less obvious as it once was to some owners and editors - 11th December 2008
 * Syria our fragile side is our strength'' - Showcasing Syrian treasures will go further than conventional diplomacy - 1st December 2008
 * Mason a racist, or just an imbecile?'' - Wittgenstein would have been greatly interested by the case of the BBC Bristol presenter and the taxi cab. Anyone looking at it will find it difficult to classify some of the statements made in the course of the events as meaningful in any sense - 17th November 2008
 * and the secret of daily hedonism'' - Daily aesthetic delights are all around us, if only we have the energy to take pleasure in observing them - 10th November 2008
 * Week In Culture: For Grenada, the long wait is over'' - 7th November 2008
 * appeal of student life in Perugia'' - 3rd November 2008
 * can we get Jamie et al to read?'' - what kind of example is a parent setting his children who repeats not only that he has never read a book, but appears to be proud of the fact? - 27th October 2008
 * about writing if you're on the Booker'' - 20th October 2008
 * God for the Bible Society'' - We can certainly admire the zeal which will preserve a language - 13th October 2008
 * a tip from Heston, Jamie'' - It would be easy to dismiss Heston Blumenthal as a complete irrelevance. But what, surely, is missing in Mr Oliver's approach is exactly what Blumenthal represents, an idea of culinary fantasy - 6th October 2008
 * didn't do anything wrong, Miriam'' - Miriam Margolyes, that wonderful actor, had a sad story to tell to Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs last week. Forty years ago, in her early twenties, she told her mother that she was a lesbian - 2nd October 2008
 * flies into the sunset, and not before time'' - 16th September 2008
 * only one way to find out what art is 'worth' – and Damien Hirst knows it'' - 8th September 2008
 * Why go to a concert if all you want to do is film it? You should be dancing...'' - 1st September 2008
 * attempting to define the indefinable for 2012'' - 25th August 2008
 * all good schools require a king's ransom'' - 18th August 2008
 * scandal lurks behind 'The Wire'?'' - 15th August 2008
 * rules for eating abroad'' - 11th August 2008
 * My take on the great vibrato debate'' - Friday, 8th August 2008
 * Britain's foodies are digging truffles'' - Thursday, 7th August 2008
 * A sucker for the 007 experience - Friday, 1st August 2008
 * Never mind the flags, just enjoy the music - Monday, 21st July 2008
 * Some will throw a party, others a brick - Monday, 14th July 2008
 * Debunking this myth of harmless celebrity - Monday, 7th July 2008
 * Who needs nice? What we want is a winner - Monday, 30th June 2008
 * Protection for older people comes not before time - Monday, 23rd June 2008
 * Is it safe to revisit the harems? - Friday, 20th June 2008
 * Ban supermarkets from selling alcohol - Tuesday, 17th June 2008
 * The peculiarities of English retain its spell - Monday, 9th June 2008
 * The fine line between high art and erotica - Monday, 2nd June 2008
 * Britain, 2008... it's our statues that will tell all - Monday, 26th May 2008
 * Now we've all signed up to the freak show - Monday, 19th May 2008
 * The answer lies in the length of men's shorts - Monday, 12th May 2008
 * The classical allusion makes a comeback - Monday, 5th May 2008
 * An airport security measure I can't face - Monday, 28th April 2008
 * Nice to see the Royals boosting the economy - Monday, 21st April
 * What the Dickens is she talking about? - Monday, 14th April 2008
 * You and your friends can come out of the closet now, Mr Humphries - In the 1970s, the likes of John Inman had to deny their homosexuality in spite of their obviously gay acts. But why are modern gay comics still peddling the tired old stereotypes? - Sunday, 13th April 2008
 * Banning Boris-ing is a waste of time - Monday 7th April 2008
 * Don't dismiss 'Heat'. It's a very superior product - Thursday, 3rd April 2008
 * Why pretend that opera is funky? - Friday, 28th March 2008
 * What do politicians know about teaching? - Tuesday, 25th March 2008
 * The reckless hedonism that shames Britons abroad - Tuesday, 18th March 2008
 * There is no logic to our treatment of Mehdi Kazemi - Thursday, 13th March 2008
 * A train company that turns passengers into victims - Tuesday, 4th March 2008
 * Being gay is no longer disapproved of. Hiding it is - Tuesday, 26th February 2008
 * How can you learn a language and not speak it? - Tuesday, 19th February 2008
 * This phoney vision of cultural renaissance - Thursday, 14th February 2008
 * Why I always savour the taste of a good cookery book - Tuesday, 12th February 2008
 * We need straight talk when it comes to terror - Tuesday, 5th February 2008
 * Don't let McDonald's dish out burger bar A-levels - Tuesday, 29th January 2008
 * Sock it to 'em, Paxo – you're fighting for us all - Tuesday, 22nd January 2008
 * How wrong of Oxford to still the call to prayer - Tuesday, 15th January 2008
 * Raise the curtain on another daft musical - Tuesday, 8th January 2008
 * I always knew that pottering was good for you - Tuesday, 1st January 2008



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