Even our most woke students can’t define cancel culture
The problem with Cancelled (Channel 4), a reasoned attempt by Richard Bacon to get to the heart of cancel culture, is that nobody is quite sure what…
Richard Bacon: ‘Cancel culture is public shaming under a new guise’
Some of the examples Bacon mentions in our conversation, however, are much more everyday and closer to home. “A younger female friend came round to see us…
The Moral Maze is the BBC’s last bastion of free speech – it must be saved
And it models high standards: it shows that it is not enough to have a vague moral hunch about something, you have to be well-informed, articulate and…
Brian May: ‘I don’t find it easy living in this world today’
Under fluorescent strip lights in the archive library at King’s College on London’s Strand, Brian May is transporting me back in time. On the table between myself…
Sindhu Vee on the comedy of offence: ‘I should be able to joke about everyone’
Sindhu Vee likens herself to Al Pacino. “You know, the bit in Scarface,” she says, “where he’s sitting behind that big table and there are mounds and…
The best smart thinking and self-improvement books to buy for Christmas 2021
Once upon a time three brothers, working together at New York’s Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital, discovered that a histamine pill worked better for the mentally ill than electroshock…
The best books about cancel culture to read in 2021
Free speech is muzzled, moan the Right. So it should be, say the Left; it is merely a licence for vocal oppressors to shout over the oppressed….
Michael Vaughan shows we are now living in a ‘guilty until proven guilty’ Orwellian state
“Cricket is facing a reckoning,” thundered Cindy Butts, chair of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket, on Radio 4. Hang on, should we really be so…
The Benny Hill Show is back – so what do three generations make of it?
An under-appreciated benefit of being a feature writer in a newspaper office is that you can have practically anything on your computer screen, at any time, and…