The Mirror Crack'd

With only a week to go before the long-awaited (by him at least) coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey, anticipation is at fever pitch. Well, you could be forgiven for thinking so anyway based on all the press and media coverage it's getting. Public opinion polling, on the other hand, reveals a rather different picture. While 46% of Brits polled said they would watch the TV coverage 70% of young people aged 18-25 said they were not interested in the royal family and only 33% of people of colour expressed any interest. This ceremony has been in the planning stage for years under the codename Operation Golden Orb, with a meeting held annually to finesse arrangements. With such meticulous and painstaking groundwork of course the ceremony will be flawless. The shambolic coronations of Queen Victoria and her predecessors that took place in an undemocratic, pre-film and TV age, would never be tolerated today.  In the past, getting the crown on the monarch's head (prefer

There are some problems that only afflict the middle classes, and I've just discovered one of them. My favourite tea is lapsang suchong (it was Churchill's too, apparently, not that that's much of a recommendation) but it's becoming increasingly difficult to source these days. I assumed this was simply a matter of changing tastes leaving me in a generational cul-de-sac once again. But, no, I should have known that it all comes down to money. I'd never stopped to consider the origins of the blend, life being too short to read tea packets. Originally China, obviously, but nowadays I assumed the leaves were smoked (or smoke-flavoured) closer to home. How wrong can one be? It seems they are still picked and smoked over red pine embers in the Wuji Mountans of Fujian Province and exported to the West. (Who knew? - not me, obviously.) Hence, cost has suddenly become an issue again, as it was in the 18th century, of course, which is why tea caddies had locks and the chatela

Today's Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate emergency demonstration, 'The Big One', coincided with the London Marathon. As both events were, so to speak, running in parallel in Westminster it could have proved logistically awkward. Indeed, there were fears expressed (or is that stoked up?) by the rightwing press and media that climate protesters might disrupt the race as Just Stop Oil (JSO) protesters did with the snooker championship recently.  In the event, and doubtless much to the chagrin of media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch and Lord Rothermere, and lickspittle commentators like Piers Morgan, the two events coincided but never collided. (In truth, a great deal of effort by both sets of organisers had been put into ensuring that they did not.) When I got on the tube in East London earlier today on my way to the XR event there were masses of people carrying placards. Hurrah!, I thought, XR is finally getting through to 'ordinary' people (not that we regular protes

Eastertide is a time when many Christians revisit, or re-evaluate, their faith*. The Easter story is a powerful one and, whether one believes it or not, brings us most directly into contact with Christ's mission. The Christmas story sets the scene for what is to come, establishing Jesus' credentials as the promised Messiah while making clear the path he is destined to follow. But Easter forms the fulfillment of the prophesies and the foundation of all Christian teaching. The three Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark and Luke, set out in simple narrative format the words and deeds of Jesus, unmediated by commentary. The slightly later Gospel of John meditates on Jesus' divinity, developing a Christology that was built on by missionaries such as Paul and Peter. As an atheist, I have an intellectual curiosity about the historical background of Jesus, and a philosophical interest in the development of the story of his life, death and supposed resurrection into

What better way to spend a long Easter Bank Holiday weekend than slumped in front of the telly? Well, let's face it, like most of the rest of the UK population, I wasn't going to be in church, was I? If you're going to 'do' Easter from the comfort of your own home then you could do a lot worse (and believe me, worse was to come) than the definitive 1961 Hollywood epic, King of Kings , on BBC2. At just over two-and-a-half hours it was certainly an immersive experience, with a suitably portentous narration by Orson Welles, delivered in cod-Gospelese, setting the pietistic tone. Jesus, played by Jeffrey Hunter, was about as wooden as his cross, ironically only really coming to life as he was about to die on it  - but then I guess that's the Christian message - though his Lord's Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount sequence did bring a tear to this cynical old eye. It's always impressive to see crowd scenes in these old epics made up of thousands of extras an

It looks very much as if Humza Yousaf has drawn the short straw in becoming SNP Leader and First Minister of Scotland at the very moment his party implodes. Nicola Surgeon was always going to be a hard act to follow. But even her iron grip was beginning to loosen towards the end of her tenure in office and her surprise resignation took place against a backdrop of falling support for her Independence prospectus, shared rather than majority government at Holyrood, poor governance in many areas, grave legislative missteps, rumours of scandal, compounded by a resurgent Unionist Labour Party. Although she appeared to have the magic touch, even she could only keep the genie in the bottle for so long. This morning it escaped,  Anything I write from here on must be heavily caveated because the full facts are not yet known and may take time to emerge. The long and the short of it, though, is that this morning Scottish police arrested Sturgeon's husband, Peter Murrell, and are searching thei

I'm about to shake the dust of the Canaries off my feet - and with the calima that's been   blowing over from the Sahel this last week there's been a deal of that to contend with. But its not just the desert sand that gets up one's nose here, the increasingly frivolous lifestyle is becoming a major irritant too. When I first came to the Canaries in 2016 the archipelago had started its slow climb-back from the crisis of 2008. Its economy, so heavily dependent on mass tourism, had been dealt a devastating blow by the financial collapse but half-finished building projects were suddenly being completed and new developments begun. Nevertheless, the rural areas remained relatively tranquil and unspoiled, though even this would turn out to be only a temporary respite.  Three years later the first stirrings of an indigenous environmentalist movement were beginning to make themselves felt, with well-organised protest groups trying to prevent the blitz of hotel, residential, ind