What the rise of bubble tea says about British high streets
Qun and richard ferreira opened a bubble-tea shop in Middlesbrough, in north-east England, in 2022. “To my knowledge, it was ...
Britain’s oldest newspaper is a treasure trove of trivia
On August 6th 1776 the London Gazette did what it had done for over 110 years. It named freshly bankrupted merchants. It adve...
The rise of the Net-Zero Dad
How do you know if someone is vegan? They will tell you, runs the old joke. How do you know if someone owns a heat pump? They...
Backing Heathrow expansion suggests Labour is serious about boosting growth
Few THINGS symbolise Britain’s lackadaisical attitude towards economic growth better than the collection of fields, ditches a...
Can Magnus Carlsen convince people to watch chess?
CHESS IS the sort of deep and rewarding game that you can spend an enjoyable lifetime failing to master. But even ardent fans...
Are internet firms the problem, or are you the problem?
Superbloom. By Nicholas Carr. W.W. Norton; 272 pages; $29.99 and £19.99 IN EARLY 2019 an unusual abundance of orange poppies ...
The Michelin Guide is no longer the only tastemaker in town
It began, implausibly, with a guide to French roads. In 1900 two brothers, André and Édouard Michelin, wanted to promote trav...
Tofu:never judge a food by its political reputation
SUELLA BRAVERMAN, Britain’s former home secretary, blamed “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati” for a protest that closed ...
The French government’s survival is now in Socialist hands
THREE YEARS ago the French Socialist Party was crushed into irrelevance. The party that supplied two modern presidents—Franço...
Inside Europe, border checks are creeping back
LOBITH, NEAR where the river Rhine enters the Netherlands, has been a border town ever since northern Europe has had borders....