The Oldie, October 2025

Shakespeare of science

Idler, September 2025

Friday night live

The Times, June 2025

Notting Hill, actually

Perspective, June 2025

Rebel with a cause

The Spectator, February 2025

The Kierkegaard lens

The Times, November 2024

Talking with Mikhail

Engelsberg Ideas, June 2024

The cuckoo clock

The Spectator, May 2024

The purity of massaoke

The Spectator, April 2024

Talking is thinking

The Spectator, March 2024

Let’s talk about science

The Times, February 2024

The artist and the conman

Engelsberg Ideas, February 2024

Hounds of Zaroff

The Spectator, January 2024

If writers ruled

Nautilus, January 2024

The art of blackboards

The Sunday Times, November 2023

The method sculptor

The Spectator, October 2023

Underground Orpheus

The Spectator, September 2023

The most beautiful game

The Oldie, May 2023

Goodbye, Bavarian rose

Nautilus, March 2023

Inventing cordite

Troitsky Variant, February 2023

Science without borders

Port Magazine, January 2023

Young Casanova

The Spectator, December 2022

The unluckiest Tube stop

The Critic, December 2022

See it, say it, haunted

Port Magazine, August 2022

The real monster

Daily Mail, July 2022

Dark heart of Deliverance

WhyNow.co.uk, June 2022

Pick your own adventure

Financial Times, June 2022

What a gas

The Daily Telegraph, May 2022

A ballad for Reading Gaol

Argo, April 2022

An Italian town in Greece

The Guardian, March 2022

She invented superheroes

The Spectator, March 2022

Cinema’s greatest scene

Daily Mail, February 2022

White on white on white

The Times, December 2021

The house of laughter

The Times, November 2021

How Bond beat the Soviets

The Daily Telegraph, November 2020

The Whitechapel Wilde

Argo, Spring/Summer 2020

Who created the Odyssey? 

The Spectator, November 2019

The banality of Instapoetry

The Sunday Times, October 2019

The horror of Instapoetry

The Spectator, November 2019

The first superheroes

The Spectator, October 2019

He’ll be back

The Sunday Times, August 2019

Batman’s darkest secret

The Sunday Times, January 2018

A smashing time in Corfu

Medium, January 2018

Always carry a blade

The Irish Times, November 2016

Nine qualities of cool

Slate, October 2016

The true meaning of irony

The Daily Telegraph, October 2016

Why old people are cooler

Financial Times, September 2016

The rockstar of pop art

The Independent, February 2016

Meet Method Writing

The Sunday Times, January 2017

5 French to name-drop

The Independent, December 2015

Cultural name fatigue

The Irish Times, December 2015

The genius of Annie Hall

The Sunday Times, November 2015

In praise of bad sex

The Daily Telegraph, November 2015

The gentle art of pretension

The Sunday Times, November 2015

Our anti-intellectualism

GQ, October 2015

The rise of the God beard

The Daily Beast, October 2015

Copyright law is an ass

New Statesman, October 2015

In praise of the Greeks

The Sunday Times, August 2015)

The enemy within

Newsweek, July 2015

Curse of the Matterhorn

The Sunday Times, August 2015

Remembering Cumbie

The Spectator, November 2014

Screenwriting is dead

The Sunday Times, August 2014

In praise of anti-celebrities

The Sunday Times, August 2014

Music’s greatest song

The Spectator, September 2013

Reading in Transylvania

The Independent, May 2013

All hail, Sealand

The Spectator, June 2012

An old man of Corfu

The Spectator, November 2012

The island of Scientology

The Guardian, October 2011

Swimming from Albania

The Guardian, June 2001

Maraini interview