All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Whether it’s food, music or movies, this time of the year is all about traditions. To my mind, there are few better than Boxing Day football. Across the country, fans like me partake in the ritual of watching our team play a match, the result of which can make or break our Christmas. Teams in
If you’re a regular, or even an occasional, customer at Lidl, you’ll know what to expect. Own-brand foodstuffs that shamelessly imitate better-known manufacturers and, by doing so, flirt with copyright infringement right up to the edge of legality; a selection of wines, spirits and beers that alternate between excellent value for the money and frankly
Later today, the King will address the nation, as he has annually since he acceded the throne in September 2022. This year’s is expected not only to be the most eagerly anticipated and arguably momentous speech that Charles has delivered, but also probably since his mother attempted to make some sense of the chaotic, grief-stricken
Another Christmas, another BBC adaptation of a Julia Donaldson story. This time it’s an animated version of Tiddler, the story of a little fish who is always late for school and who makes up tall stories to explain why. The tall stories get around the ocean and when Tiddler gets caught by a fishing boat
Most people shudder at the thought of working on Christmas Day. Not me. I’ve worked as a hospital doctor since 2000 and, most years, come 25 December, I’ll be doing the ward round. As a junior doctor, I didn’t have much choice about doing the Christmas Day shift. But since becoming a consultant, I have
For hundreds of years, the 12 days of Christmas have been a significant highlight of the English religious year. In the medieval period, churches in Britain and Ireland were vividly adorned with paintings, stained glass, and sculptures that depicted the Christmas story. Many of these images were destroyed in the Taliban-like wave of destruction that accompanied
On a steamy August morning in 2019, I went to Sunday mass in Gaza city’s Church of the Holy Family. It’s a simple stone building, built in 1974, and shares a compound with a school attended by 500 children, not all of them Catholic. Today, in war time, it is a refuge for hundreds of displaced
Well, well, well. It now transpires that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party has spent thousands of pounds on media training for its ministers since winning the July election – yet, despite this, senior politicians have still managed to make a series of rather embarrassing gaffes. Hardly money well spent, eh? Starmer’s army spent almost £17,000
When Vauxhall announced the closure of its Luton plant a few weeks ago it seemed that the government had finally woken up to how the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate was killing off Britain’s car industry. We were promised a consultation on the rules – which demand that manufacturers ensure 22 per cent of cars
It’s 38C outside and I’m in a Johannesburg hypermarket owned by the Pick n Pay chain, one of the biggest in South Africa. Despite the heat, their music system has a woman singing ‘Let it snow!’ and songs themed around winter and chestnuts roasting on the fire. In rural areas, the scotch cart is common,
There’s been a ‘vibe shift’. After the resounding victory at the recent US election, at long last things are changing, and heading towards some form of hope and sanity. This Christmas, there’s hope for the future on the right. Is this December 2024 or December 2019? Because the current anticipation for the second Donald Trump
As Christmas comes around again, we will discover that Australia is no longer a Christian country. According to the most recent census in 2021, Christianity is not a majority faith here and, of its denominations, none has declined more rapidly than Anglicanism – which has lost more than a third of its declared adherents since
Merry Christmas – or perhaps, I should say, Season’s Greetings. The festive period can be something of a minefield for the culturally sensitive: even a presumptive or mis-worded greeting, however well meant, may be misconstrued as an affront to diversity and an expression of non-inclusivity. Not least to those who don’t celebrate Christmas, perhaps due
The Christmas elf is so familiar now that it could easily be the first character you think of when you hear the word ‘elf’ – outside of J. R. R. Tolkien’s works, that is. The very recent Christmas custom of the ‘Elf on the Shelf’ has lately brought elves to particular prominence in the modern British Christmas.
Artillery boomed over the Buda hills, the flashes of explosions slicing through the freezing winter dusk. The crack of rifle fire sounded nearby and the air was thick with the acrid stink of cordite. It was 24 December 1944 and Giorgio Perlasca was trying to get to the Spanish Legation villa to celebrate Christmas. The
It was November 1843, two years after Prince Albert first introduced Britain to the tradition of the Christmas tree. Charles Dickens was 31, and yet to grow his beard. A dire report on child labour the previous year had worked him up into a compassionate rage. Just as pressingly, Dickens needed cash. The author was
Everyone is talking about Reform: Rachel Reeves complains that Nigel Farage ‘doesn’t have a clue’ how to make the economy grow. Kemi Badenoch says Reform is offering ‘knee-jerk analysis’ rather than thought-through policies. The obvious rejoinder is that Reeves doesn’t have any growth and Badenoch doesn’t have any policies, so these criticisms are a bit
In some rather strange news this festive season, it transpires that the Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC) has banned John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men from being studied at GCSE level in Wales. The news comes amid concerns about the use of racist language in the novel, with the move to come into force from
This is hardly how 2024 was supposed to end for Labour. Free from the shackles of ‘14 years of Tory misrule’, the economy was supposed to take off. ‘Growth, growth, growth,’ Keir Starmer told us, a little unconvincingly, were going to be the government’s three main priorities. Indeed, Britain was going to tear away as
Christmas may be two days away but there is little reason for cheer in 11 Downing Street. The Chancellor faces another wave of bad economic news this morning. Revised figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show there was no growth in the last quarter, between July and September. The update comes as the
Donald Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita hardly minced his words on hearing that Peter Mandelson had been appointed as the British ambassador to the United States. Mandelson is an ‘absolute moron’, he said. While one might have chosen an alternative rhetorical style, there is no denying that Mandelson’s appointment at this particular moment in history is deeply problematic
If you’re a writer, should AI companies be allowed to use your work to train their models without your permission? This is a matter of concern for many writers – as it is for artists, musicians, and anyone whose work is being harvested by the industry and spewed out as AI glop. It’s not just
When weeping Parisians watched Notre Dame, the city’s beloved 800-year-old cathedral, being consumed by a devastating fire in 2019, it served as a sad symbol of the decimation of churchgoing itself in France. Ever since revolutionaries began decapitating priests and nuns in the 1790s, a precipitous decline in Catholic faith has been underway in the
This year, Christmas carol services are expected to draw their largest congregations since the pandemic. As numbers attending carol services swell, one central London church has appealed to its regular congregation to donate 12,000 mince pies to give away. Even in the wake of shocking revelations of religious abuse in recent years, those who rarely
If someone were to read the runes, this first Labour Christmas would not augur well. Not only have we had Keir Starmer’s excruciating ‘illuminations countdown’ in Downing Street – a joyless event if ever there was one – but also the cut-price Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square – perhaps the mangiest conifer the Norwegians, in
Emmanuel Macron will deliver his traditional New Year’s Eve message to France next week, an event that one imagines is testing the skills of his speech writers. What to say after a year of unmitigated disaster? What is there for the French to look forward to 2025 other than more uncertainty, more insecurity and more
It’s been a pretty good year for Nigel Farage. At the beginning of 2024, he was out of politics and fresh out of the jungle, having returned from I’m A Celeb… with no imminent plans of a comeback. Now, fast forward 12 months, he is an MP, party leader and beating Keir Starmer as a more
Once one of France’s most respected publications, Le Monde is in crisis. Its newsroom is gripped by a climate of fear, where only left-wing and woke views are tolerated, and dissenters whisper their frustrations in the shadows. Once a beacon of intellectual rigour and fearless reporting, an investigation by its rival Le Figaro paints a damning picture
Watching Tyson Fury get robbed last night in Riyadh, I realised on balance that I am in favour of Saudi Arabia’s often ludicrous-seeming recent efforts at sports-washing. Why not? Sure, staging ultra-high profile boxing matches like this in a nation with no boxing heritage whatsoever is obviously a shameless effort at changing negative perceptions, but