Mind & body.

The BBC's The Big Questions has asked me on to discuss consumerism. Presumably they want me to defend it and I'm pretty happy to do that. Of course, I intend to be a little mealy-mouthed. I am very happy to defend affluence and inequality. I think people do little harm and much good as consumers, but I suppose consumerism is one degree too materialist to be wholly satisfactory.  Read more...

This is perhaps the most beautiful interior I have ever seen. It is at once bohemian and aristocratic. Karen Blixen being who she was, it is determinedly unbourgeois. It is of course also a wonderful pilgrimage site. Read more...

I never met Sergeant Lee "Jonno" Johnson, Natasha Richardson or Jade Goody but I am proud of them. I suppose other countries can produce such "types", and that if I were American or French I could point to similarly moving or touching personal stories. But still: Blimey! Read more...

The Myerson family saga is a perfect media event. I can think of no-one who is losing. Jake, especially, stands a good chance of benefiting. Read more...

Patrick Hosking in The Times and John Gapper in the Financial Times both say interesting things about Davos Man. But they leave the impression that Mr Schwab's elite festival was about boosting the egos of corporate giants. The real Davos Mistake was quite other. Read more...

Jarvis Cocker of Pulp seems like a good egg, if a little coddled. He was guest editor of the Today programme on New Year's Eve and agonised about climate and financial meltdown. Strikingly not-novel, his account was partly based on a trip to the Arctic made by a group of artists. How deliciously lacking in irony it all was. Read more...

Andrew Marr is so obviously nice that it seems unfair to criticise him. But Mr Marr is so infuriatingly, blandly, the decent liberal right-on that I am bound to have a go. Read more...

I love ecological insight and I fear that my enthusiasm is especially piqued when there is a human interface with the workings of nature. Here are my three current favourites. Read more...