24 h. ago SARAH VINE: The real reason stars like Meghan are all obsessed with 2016

Barely has the new year got under way and already the internet has decided it's had enough of 2026. Social media is in the grip of a wave of nostalgia for 2016.

Politics

67 h. ago Keir Starmer MUST outlaw the 'terrible' practice of cousin marriage, SARAH VINE tells PETER HITCHENS on provocative new podcast

First-cousin marriage does not belong in the modern world and the Prime Minister must 'show some moral courage' in siding with MPs who want it outlawed, Sarah Vine has argued.

Events

3 d. ago SARAH VINE: Jenrick has proved he's a morally vacant coward you can't trust with power... while Kemi's shown an unflappable core of steel

Kemi Badenoch's decision to fire Robert Jenrick from the Shadow Cabinet and remove the whip has, I'm afraid, been a long time coming.

Events

5 d. ago SARAH VINE: The REAL reason Meghan is plotting a return to 'racist, old

Meghan's brief sojourn in Britain has been implied at times as being akin to torture, poor love. 'Almost unsurvivable,' was how she put it, wasn't it? So why come here, Duchess, if you hate it so much?

Politics

8 d. ago SARAH VINE: 'Smart' tech has turned us all into zombified slaves

My mother marked a significant birthday last week, so I flew to Spainfor a small celebration. It's fair to say that things didn't go entirely as planned.

Politics

8 d. ago Truth about Heated Rivalry, by SARAH VINE. The gay hockey romance has caused hysteria among straight women. I've watched the X

Are you into gay porn? If not, I would proceed with caution when watching the hot new show of the moment, Heated Rivalry, which premieres in the UK this weekend.

Politics

9 d. ago Truth about Heated Rivals, by SARAH VINE. The gay hockey romance has caused hysteria among straight women. I've watched the X

Are you into gay porn? If not, I would proceed with caution when watching the hot new show of the moment, Heated Rivalry, which premieres in the UK this weekend.

Politics

2 w. ago Edinburgh's Hogmanay 2025 review: The Concert in the Gardens

This was a welcome and well-curated return for the Concert in the Gardens following last year’s cancellation, writes David Pollock

Politics

2 w. ago SARAH VINE: Only in a country waging a vicious war on motorists could driving at 24mph in a 20mph zone land my famous neighbour in court

The actor Colin Salmon is in a spot of hot water. Salmon, you may remember, played the dashing MI6 deputy to Judi Dench's M in three James Bond films.

Events

2 w. ago The Master of Contradictions by Morten Høi Jensen review – how Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain

A vivid account of the creation of one of literary modernism’s greatest achievementsIn a 1924 letter to André Gide, Thomas Mann said he would soon be sending along a copy of his new novel, The Magic Mountain. “But I assure you that I do not in the least expect you to read it,” he wrote. “It is a highly problematical and ‘German’ work, and of such monstrous dimensions that I know perfectly well it won’t do for the rest of Europe.”Morten Høi Jensen’s approachable and informative study of The Magic Mountain positions Mann as a writer who was contradictory to his core: an artist who dressed and behaved like a businessman; a homosexual in a conventional marriage with six children; an upstanding burgher obsessed with death and corruption. Very much the kind of man who would send someone a book and tell them not to read it. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Bellen d'Or 2025 nominees as Alexander Isak, Jake Paul and Eni Aluko fight for prat award

The fifth annual Bellen d'Or awards sees 13 candidates fight it out for Daily Star Sport's 2025 prize idiot award as we nominates the sportsmen and women who made fools of themselves this year

Events

2 w. ago The Dead Don’t Bleed by Neil Rollinson review – a gripping tale of family and forbidden love

Two brothers attempt to escape their father’s gangland past in a tense, tender debut that moves between Thatcher-era Northumberland and southern SpainAndalucía is famous for its variety: high alpine mountains and snow-capped peaks, river plains and rolling olive groves, sun-baked coastlines and arid deserts. It is the perfect setting for Neil Rollinson’s debut novel, which is its own kind of spectacular mosaic. Built from short, seemingly discrete chapters that take us between Spain in 2003 and the coalfields of Northumberland in the 70s and 80s, The Dead Don’t Bleed coheres into an extraordinarily tense and tender portrait of two brothers trying to escape their father’s gangland past.Until now, Rollinson has been known as a poet; his collection Talking Dead was shortlisted for the 2015 Costa poetry prize. Here he brings his talent for compressed evocation to an exploration of fraternal rivalry and the enduring impact of a violent patriarchy. If you took Frank and his...

Events

2 w. ago SARAH VINE: I know the sad reason the Ramsays snubbed the Peatys... and it's all because of Gordon's shame

This Adam Peaty (or to give him his full name now, Adam Ramsay Peaty) saga is fascinating - and not just because it's such a juicy celebrity feud.

Politics

2 w. ago Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story review – shall we all vow not to watch true

This terrifying documentary about the Utah life coach convicted of extreme child abuse feels supremely grubby. How about a new year’s resolution not to watch – or make – anything this grim ever again?We are always aware, I think, of man’s inhumanity to man. The latest true-crime documentary from Netflix is here to remind you that this is an umbrella term. It is undoubtedly rarer, though precisely why is unclear, but women can inflict the most awful suffering too – and here, a pair of them do so on children.Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story is the latest offering from Skye Borgman, who is the undisputed queen of the genre, specialising in high-end takes on the most extreme, the most only-in-America stories of depravity you could (not) hope to find. She made her name with 2017’s Abducted in Plain Sight, about the case of Jan Broberg, who was kidnapped not once but twice by Robert Berchtold, a close friend of the Brobergs and a sexual predator who effectively groomed the whol...

Politics

2 w. ago The Zorg by Siddharth Kara review – scarcely imaginable horrors at sea

A vivid and chilling account of the deadly voyage that triggered the abolition of the Atlantic slave tradeOver the nearly four centuries during which the transatlantic slave trade operated, 12.5 million Africans were trafficked by Europeans to the Americas. 1.8 million of them perished on the voyage under scarcely imaginable conditions of overcrowding, filth and disease. Some threw themselves overboard. And others were thrown into the sea.In The Zorg, Siddharth Kara tells two stories. The first is of a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship – the murder of 132 Africans by the British crew. The second relates how that event came to play a role in the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, in large part through the work of a dazzling array of committed campaigners. One of these was Olaudah Equiano, author of one of the few surviving accounts of the Middle Passage from the perspective of an enslaved person, in which he described it as “a scene of horror almost&...

Events

2 w. ago No Time for Goodbye review – well intentioned drama about the loneliness of the asylum

Journalist Don Ng’s debut feature raises interesting questions about the asylum experience – but his film is too sentimental and superficial to truly answer themThis is a film made with the best of intentions – and it has some good insights into the loneliness and isolation of seeking asylum in the UK. But there are a few too many sentimental moments to properly work as social-realism, or anything close to convincing drama, which is disappointing given its creator, Don Ng, is a journalist-turned-director making his feature debut. It’s set in London, where Bosco (a sensitive performance by Yiu-Sing Lam) has arrived from Hong Kong fleeing the government’s crackdown on political freedom, though he doesn’t really talk much about the situation back home.Bosco is sent to live with other asylum seekers on a military base while his application is processed. Some of the best scenes turn out to be gentle observations of his sense of dislocation: walking around the local corner shop, for examp...

Events

2 w. ago New Year's Honours 2026: Lionesses stars land gongs after Euros triumph with coach Sarina Wiegman handed honorary damehood as Daniel Levy is given a CBE

England women's football head coach Sarina Wiegman has been awarded an honorary damehood after leading the Lionesses to a successful defence of their Euros title.

Politics

2 w. ago Donald Trump in his own words – the year in racism and misogyny

The president has increased the amount of invective he’s spewed against women and people of color Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Stork of Hope review – Belarusian Holocaust drama paints a flattering portrait of its citizens

Cliche-ridden, excessively sentimental and lacking in historical rigour, this film is a grave act of nationalist self-soothingNothing says happy Hanukah like a Holocaust-themed movie, especially if it ends on a feelgood note of survival and reunion after a run of tragic deaths and lashings of suffering. But this Israeli-Belarusian co-production is so excessively sentimental, cliche-riddled and arguably hypocritical considering its provenance, it’s not easy to forbear.It opens in contemporary Tel Aviv with an elderly man named Ilya receiving news he can barely believe is true: someone dear to him from his childhood is alive. This prompts Ilya to tell his grandsons for the first time about what happened to him during the second world war. Desaturated cinematography then unfolds his story in flashback, showing young Ilya (Andrey Davidyuk) and his little brother Sasha as preteen Jewish boys living in Minsk with their parents, just as the war starts. Dad goes off to the front and is neve...

Events

2 w. ago The English House by Dan Cruickshank review – if walls could talk

A deep dive into the creation of eight buildings from the 1700s to the 1900s tells some very human storiesHistory used to be about wars and dates, but to the architecture writer and TV presenter Dan Cruickshank, it’s more about floors and grates. In his new book, he takes a keen-eyed tour of eight English houses, from Northumberland to Sussex, dating from the early 1700s to exactly 100 years ago, and ranging from an outlandish gothic pile to one of the first council flats. In Cruickshank’s pages, classical influences from Rome and Greece give way to a revival of medieval English gothic and the emergence of modernism.He is particularly interested in who commissioned and built his chosen dwellings, and how they got the job done. It’s a new spin on the recent fashion for historians to explore the homes of commoners, as opposed to royalty and aristocrats, in order to tell the life stories of their occupants. This probably began with the late Gillian Tindall, who wrote a highly...

Politics