The Social World

Author: Alexander Larman

  • What can we expect from the Simpsons sequel?

    What can we expect from the Simpsons sequel?

    It is now more than three decades since President Bush the First declared that American families should be “more like the Waltons, and less like the Simpsons.” In this, as in so many other things, Bush was to be disappointed. Thirty-three years after he made his remarks, the Waltons are now barely discussed in popular culture, if at all, while the exploits of America’s most famous yellow-skinned family have now moved into their 37th season with a further three, at least, planned. This is a degree of longevity that is unparalleled in any live-action sitcom equivalent, and the show’s creator Matt Groening could be forgiven for doing a victory lap.

    At the time of writing, it is unclear as to whether the newly announced Simpsons movie sequel, due for release in 2027, represents such a lap. It is coming two decades after the first film spin-off, which grossed $536 million worldwide and attracted critical acclaim, and in this new era of long-belated sequels, its arrival is relatively swift. The continued success of its televisual counterpart means that an enthusiastic fanbase continues to enjoy the exploits of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa et al, and their paymasters at Fox will be hoping for a similarly rapturous response in a couple of years.

    All the same, the reception that The Simpsons Movie 2, as it is presently and unimaginatively named, is likely to receive remains largely uncertain. The joy of the Simpsons, despite Bush’s dismissive comments, has always been that its blessedly dysfunctional family feels a good deal more American than the sickly saccharine Waltons ever did. For any show to remain relevant and funny after the time that it has been on the air is a remarkable achievement, and while many would grumble that it peaked decades ago and now is treading water, the show still manages to get laughs in a way that, say, the revamped King of the Hill is unable to.

    Nonetheless, perhaps another big-screen outing might be a harder sell, given the considerably greater challenges that films now face at theaters. In 2007, the competition that the first Simpsons movie faced were the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter, which were good-natured family pictures that made a lot of money without being particularly demanding, or indeed accomplished. Now, however, the rise of streaming and the subsequent difficulties that anything that feels remotely rote face mean that, bluntly put, the Simpsons sequel is going to have to be really, really good if it wants to stake its continued place in the cultural firmament.

    What should it do to differentiate itself from the series? Of course, it could go nakedly political, but this might feel like a step too far for a show that has never turned its satirical barbs into straightforward sloganeering (and is all the better for it). Yet somehow, the adventures of Spider-Pig, which were so charming the first time around, would now seem almost laughably tame and undynamic given how much higher the bar for family entertainment has been raised. The Wild Robot, for instance, showed how peerless animated films could be, and while nobody is expecting the Simpsons 2 to be similarly heart-rending, audiences may well expect a more naked display of emotion than has been shown hitherto.

    Groening and his co-creators have embraced a considerable challenge. Admittedly, they have pulled it off once before, but if they fail, it runs the risk of tarnishing a much-loved brand. There are any number of avenues and possibilities for this most allusive of shows (a musical? A film-noir pastiche?) that might be pursued, but if they stumble, then the results will be regrettable. Let us hope, in that case, that the creative fire is within them, and that the result does not turn into a sad pastiche of the kind that Krusty the Clown might have dreamt up.

  • Does Prince William need to ‘change’ the British monarchy?

    Does Prince William need to ‘change’ the British monarchy?

    Of all the people who might be expected to get revelatory public comments out of the Prince of Wales, the beetle-browed actor Eugene Levy would not be high on the list. Yet during the Schitt’s Creek and American Pie thespian’s new show, The Reluctant Traveler, Levy ticks off a series of “bucket list” experiences – one of which was getting close to the royal family. While it would, presumably, have been fairly easy to get an audience with Prince Harry, Levy’s intentions instead lay with Britain’s actual royal family, and so the encounter took place between him and Prince William.

    The most striking remarks that the heir to the throne made to Levy were that he clearly regards his father’s reign as an interregnum between two rather more significant periods on the throne: his grandmother’s, and his own. Not, of course, that he was so tactless or brazen to make such a comment, but Levy managed to elicit some unusually candid remarks from William, who was filmed drinking a pint of cider with him in Windsor’s best pub, the Two Brewers.

    “I like a little bit of change,” said William. “I want to question things more. I think it’s very important that tradition stays. And tradition has a huge part in all of this. But there are also points where you look at tradition and go, ‘Is that still fit for purpose today?’ So I like to question things.”

    Levy, scenting something of a scoop, pressed him by saying “it sounds like the monarchy will be shifting in a slightly different direction”, to which the Prince of Wales expressed agreement.

    It was notable that, while William talked fondly about his grandmother at several points during the interview, his father King Charles was barely mentioned, save for the rather blasé observation that: “My father needs a bit of protection but he’s old enough to do that himself as well.” In other words, recent gossip that the relationship between king and heir has been strained of late will only be fanned by this, rather than dispelled.

    There were, of course, fond comments about his family. Unsurprisingly, William described 2024 as “the hardest year I’ve ever had”, remarking that “it’s important my family feel protected and have the space to process a lot of the stuff that’s gone on [in the] last year.”

    Sounding more like his estranged brother than usual, he went on to sigh: “I enjoy my job but sometimes there are aspects of it, such as the media, the speculation, the scrutiny…” And, he might have added, participating in such pieces of entertainment as The Reluctant Traveler.

    Yet whether it worked or not as television, it was a fascinating insight into a very private man’s psyche. It is widely expected that William will be a transformative monarch in a way that his father has not been. His comments that he will not be looking to the past were more telling than might have been intended. William said that: “I think if you’re not careful history can be a real weight and an anchor around you. And you can feel suffocated by it and restricted… It’s important to live for the here and now. But also I think if you’re too intrinsically attached to history, you can’t possibly have any flexibility because you worry that the chess pieces move too much and therefore no change will happen.”

    This may be true. However, one hopes that if William has a trusted courtier or two at his side, that they might be able to convince him that change – presumably on the significant scale that he is intending – is not always a good or even necessary thing. In any case, a reign that many have pre-emptively dismissed as dull might yet surprise the world, although whether for good or ill remains to be seen.

  • What is going on with Amy Griffin?

    What is going on with Amy Griffin?

    Memoir, we are told, is the new growth genre within publishing. It used to be the preserve of the famous and successful, but now it has expanded to include anyone with a story to tell, whether heartwarming and inspirational or downbeat and miserable (but eventually inspirational). Many of these memoirs are New York Times bestsellers and can change the weather in the industry, helped by their prominence within such high-profile book clubs as Reese Witherspoon’s and Oprah’s. But what if the story in a memoir’s pages is exaggerated or simply fabricated? 

    Turning one’s life into invention may not be so much a lie as a gift for fiction, but when it comes to this area, it is deeply frowned upon from all sides. When James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces was revealed to be largely made up, he was summoned onto Oprah’s show to be given a stern dressing-down. Although Frey continues to have a successful career as a writer, it is forever with the taint of the fabulist. Meanwhile, in Britain, the biggest publishing scandal for years involved the nature memoirist Raynor Winn, whose book The Salt Path was swiftly renamed “The pinch of Salt Path” by humorists after The Observer unearthed a series of inconsistencies in Winn’s account of her impoverished circumstances.  

    Amy Griffin could not be more different to the woebegone Winn. A successful venture capitalist and founder of G9 Ventures, she has the kind of existence that F. Scott Fitzgerald would have delighted in. She was born into money (her father ran a Texas chain of convenience stores) and then married into more: her husband John Griffin founded the hedge fund Blue Ridge Capital. She is the kind of glossy, well-preserved all-American who is a fixture in society columns and magazines photoshoots, and her contacts book is a peerless one.  

    Little wonder, then, that when she published her memoir earlier this year, The Tell – let’s face it, it was never likely to be called My Struggle – Griffin managed to get the troika of celebrity book-club endorsers to come behind her, in the form of Oprah, Witherspoon and Jenna Bush Hager, all of whom celebrated the book’s publication in March. It was, predictably, a New York Times bestseller, and the likes of Martha Stewart and Mariska Hargitay have fallen over themselves to fete her. Drew Barrymore called it a “literary piece.” The following month, she was named one of TIME’s most influential people. She has arrived, in style.  

    Yet since a New York Times exposé emerged recently, Griffin has been conspicuously silent. The accusation? That she has made up her own memoir, and that by doing so she has made the lives of sexual-assault victims considerably more difficult. The controversy about Griffin revolves around the book’s subject, namely being abused by one of her teachers at school. She told Oprah that “the secret that I discovered was the idea that I had been, for many years, abused in the school bathroom by a teacher. I decided that, you know, if I went in and criminally investigated this person and I did everything I could to hold this person accountable, that if I could do that, then I would show that I was right and he was wrong.”  

    All wholly commendable. Yet what raised eyebrows was that Griffin participated in MDMA-assisted therapy, and that she had blocked out the abuse she suffered until taking the psychedelic drugs. This is not regarded as something ethical or conventional, and certainly not the basis of a memoir that is believed to have netted Griffin an advance of nearly a million dollars. The Times’ investigation suggested that, while there were incidents of sexual abuse at the school Griffin attended, they involved another teacher altogether, and that there were no other reports of similar cases. The suspicion was therefore raised that The Tell proved to be as false as a poker player’s feint. Tellingly, Griffin’s Wikipedia page now calls her “an American venture capitalist and fabulist.” Ouch.  

    Griffin’s publisher Penguin Random House have not made any public comment on the controversy, nor has Griffin. All parties will presumably be hoping that it swiftly blows over and that she can resume her glittering existence of air-kissing and being photographed at the Met (where she is a trustee). However, whatever happens with The Tell, it is yet another blow to the institution of memoir, where publishers are increasingly being urged to perform due diligence to make sure such accounts are verifiably accurate, rather than simply the author’s own interpretation, or “their truth.” That way, ruined lives – and lawsuits – lie.  

  • Will Trump’s tariffs trash the film industry?

    Will Trump’s tariffs trash the film industry?

    One feature of President Trump’s second term in office is that when he says he’ll do something, he usually does it, no matter how outlandish or cockamamie it might seem. So it has proved with his threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on any films that have been filmed outside the United States. He first said that he would do this in May, and many industry pundits rushed to say that his scheme was impractical, unworkable, etc. Yet veteran Trump watchers would know that once he has an idea, it will not rest.

    He has now repeated himself, with greater vigor, writing on Truth Social that “our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby.’ California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long-time, never-ending problem, I will be imposing a 100 percent Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.” In other words, Trump – a figure with a long-standing distrust of Hollywood, despite or perhaps because of the number of films that he has made cameos in – is attempting to Make Hollywood Great Again, and damn the pernicious industry types who would say anything otherwise.

    It is unclear how this plan will work in practice. The audience for foreign-language pictures has always been relatively small in the United States, meaning that if Far Eastern and European distributors believed that it would be financially ruinous to operate in the arthouse circuits on the East and West coasts, they would simply skip releasing them altogether. The Trump-voting base and the kind of people who would seek out the new Jacques Audiard picture at their local independent cinema are not, in all honesty, likely to have huge overlap. What is much more damaging for the industry is the idea that films such as The Avengers or The Batman – large-budget, American-funded pictures shot mostly in Britain for tax reasons – would become impossible to make in their current form. Budgets for these films are already sky-high, and audiences are unwilling to spend yet more money on their tickets.

    Publicly and privately, industry figures are doubtful that the tariffs will come off. As one one such figure told Variety, “He’s the president, so you have to treat it seriously, but people are mostly just confused by this.” The British producer Phil Hunt went even further, remarking that “It’s just hot air again. It’s his brand of Looney Tunes. I can’t see it helping North America. He doesn’t understand the detail of film being a global business.” While something like the recent Paul Thomas Anderson epic One Battle After Another is US-set, produced and funded, many more pictures have money from all over the world, whether it’s Britain, the Middle East or (increasingly seldom now) China. The idea of imposing punitive tariffs on all pictures seems ridiculous, but that does not mean that it won’t happen.

    And if it does, what then? It is hard not to feel that the decision has been taken as an attack on the “weak and incompetent” Gavin Newsom, to try and achieve political points. It is amusing that one of Trump’s “ambassadors to Hollywood”, the ever-controversial Mel Gibson, is currently filming his eagerly awaited Passion of the Christ sequel in Rome, which presumably would be hit by tariffs, but it seems inevitable that an exception would be made for this picture on both spiritual and economic grounds. Yet if this plan is to work and have any serious effect on the film industry’s outsourcing both filming and financing elsewhere, it would need far greater clarification and thought-through action. The shock and awe have now been achieved. Next must come the details, and only then will it be possible to see whether this has any chance of working.

  • Is Slow Horses slowing down?

    Is Slow Horses slowing down?

    Since it launched in 2022, Slow Horses has been one of the most reliable television treats for all its four seasons. Based on the excellent novels by Mick Herron, it has focused on a group of “misfits and losers,” as none other than Mick Jagger sings over the credits, who have all been semi-exiled from MI5 for various misdeeds. They have ended up in the purgatory of Slough House, where they are stuck doing various soul-destroying administrative tasks until they quit. The joke is that most of them are good at their jobs (although not without some seriously challenging interpersonal issues), led by Gary Oldman’s superspy Jackson Lamb, whose belching, flatulent and deeply unhygienic exterior belies a razor-sharp mind and a keen grasp of human nature.

    The last season saw the James Bond manqué River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) find a father, and the Slough House team a nemesis, in the form of ex-CIA operative Frank Harkness. It raised the stakes to new and giddy levels, and in the casting of veteran baddie Hugo Weaving seemed to introduce a Moriarty-esque antagonist for the ages, which is why it’s relatively disappointing that season five begins with a return to familiar territory. There’s an apparently motiveless massacre been committed by a lone shooter who swiftly gets a sniper’s bullet in the head, two men (one Asian and liberal, one white and right-wing) running to be the new mayor of London, and the various spooks are struggling to cope after the death of one of their number in the last series. Oh, and irritating tech support Roddy Ho has an unfeasibly attractive girlfriend. How does all this tie together?

    The appeal in previous seasons of Slow Horses has been half in the deliciously convoluted plotting, playing with tropes of espionage established by John le Carré and Ian Fleming and subverting them for all it’s worth, and half in the interaction between its characters, which at its best has the tight scripting of a great sitcom. This season will be the last from showrunner Will Smith, which on previous form would be a tragedy, but judged by the opening episode, something here is not quite right. The dialogue too often mistakes swearing for wit – one conversation between Lowden and the fiery Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) simply consists of the two saying “Fuck off!” “Fuck you!” to one another. And one’s heart sinks at yet another show that looks as if it’s going to revolve around the far right and men’s activists as villains.

    Still, it’s too early to write things off yet. Oldman has increasingly described Lamb as his signature role, and he gets all the best lines and situations, reveling in the chance to play a character who doesn’t ask to be liked but ends up being the center of gravity anyway, and there are hints that the rich comic elements of earlier series might yet reappear. I enjoyed Ted Lasso actor Nick Mohammed’s brief appearance as the platitudinous mayoral candidate Zafar Jaffrey, speaking in his special official voice even when there are only a handful of people in the room, and Christopher Chung excels at conveying Ho’s odd mixture of smugness and childishness.

    But for all its surface pleasures, I am concerned that the show is being written and produced at such a clip – five seasons in three years is a lot – that nobody is taking the time to reflect on why it’s built up such a persistent cult following that is always threatening to turn it into a big mainstream hit. Two more seasons are already commissioned, but I am beginning to wonder, for the first time, whether the Slow Horses might yet need to be put out to pasture on a rather permanent basis before outstaying their welcome.

  • You can’t get rid of Kanye West

    You can’t get rid of Kanye West

    Amid the hullaballoo that surrounded Charlie Kirk’s memorial service last weekend, seemingly virtually every figure associated in any way with the MAGA movement appeared – yes, even Elon Musk, who was filmed shaking hands with President Trump in one of the more unexpected rapprochements of the year. But one man who many might have expected to be present was nowhere to be seen. The rapper, producer and professional controversialist Kanye “Ye” West, who might have added a certain grim luster to the predominantly Christian music played at the memorial, was absent, and so the potential for the carefully choreographed event being thrown into chaos was avoided.

    It might sound unlikely that West would ever have been invited, but a new documentary about him, In Whose Name?, features an unexpected cameo by Kirk, depicting a 2018 meeting that took place between him and Candace Owens. The brief appearance by the late activist was far from his rabble-rousing public image: he sits quietly while West and Owens talk about how difficult they find being African American figures who don’t fit into the stereotypes expected of them. Yet in the case of West, it is impossible to think of any demographic or group that he does fit into. The 48-year-old has, at various times, been described as one of the greatest musicians in the history of America, a social and cultural pioneer who outstrips virtually every other peer he has, and a self-described Nazi, Jew-hater and Holocaust-denier. Will the real Kanye West please stand up?

    It is likely that West no longer has a clear idea who he is. Since he first came to prominence in the mid-2000s with The College Dropout and Late Registration, he has consistently upended expectations. He was never afraid of controversy, publicly stating in 2006 that he should have won Best Music Video for ‘Touch The Sky” because it “cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons.” That this might have been intended as a profoundly tasteless but very funny joke seemed not to occur to anyone, and West was compelled by no-doubt-furious management to make a public apology, which he did from the typically low-key surroundings of his U2 support slot in Brisbane. Then there was a lot more controversy, and Taylor Swift, Drake and Jay-Z, to name but three, are unlikely to be on his contacts list.

    In Whose Name? does not deal with the early years of Ye but instead begins in 2019. Typically, it does not have a big-name director behind it, but a (very) young filmmaker Nico Ballesteros, who was a mere 18 years old at the start of filming. He followed West around with an iPhone or a small camera, taking hundreds of hours of footage, which he edited down into the film’s 104-minute length. And, obviously, he got gold. The film follows everything from West’s unsuccessful presidential bid in 2020 to the breakdown of his marriage to Kim Kardashian, and shows everything in unsparing and grim detail. There are cameos expected (Trump, Musk, Kris Jenner) and unexpected (Anna Wintour) alike. It will make people who think that West is an underappreciated musical and satirical genius feel even more secure in their belief, and those who detest him will dislike him even more.

    It is fair to say that West no longer cares what people think about him. He is a remarkably unusual figure in the entertainment industry in that he has the fuck-you money that means that he can do precisely what he likes artistically and creatively, including participating in a documentary like this. For anyone else, it would be career-ending, but for its protagonist, it’s just another day at the coalface of offense. West apparently told Ballesteros that the experience of watching the film was “Very deep. It was like being dead and looking back on my life.”

    He remains the most unlikely major star living today, and whether you love or hate his work – his public statements are rather harder to defend, even from the perspective that they’re supposed to be funny – he remains captivating and profoundly unpredictable. At this point, if you told me that West would become president or end his days in a high-security jail, I would think that the two were about as likely as one another, and that, surely, is more than can be said of, say, Pharrell. Is this a good thing? Probably not. But does this offensive, often vile and contradictory figure remain a vital part of American public life? You bet.

  • Two wholly different but complementary ways of looking at Christianity

    Two wholly different but complementary ways of looking at Christianity

    In Philip Larkin’s 1954 poem “Church Going,” the narrator walks into a deserted English country church, and observes that it isn’t up to much. Larkin writes that there is “a tense, musty, unignorable silence/ Brewed God knows how long,” feels a sense of “awkward reverence” and, on the way out, “Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.” It is one of the great vignettes of church-crawling, as the practice is generally known – wandering into an empty ecclesiastical space, not being wildly impressed and strolling out again, unblessed by the visit.

    Yet for Larkin, that it will be “A shape less recognizable each week/ A purpose more obscure” is a tragedy, even for a non-believer. Even this second or third-rate building, in his eyes, merits the recognition that “A serious house on serious earth it is,” and the universal desire to embrace religion will be inevitable, “Since someone will forever be surprising/ A hunger in himself to be more serious.” In other words, “the twitch upon the thread,” as Evelyn Waugh wrote of the pull of Catholicism, is more powerful than any carefully (or carelessly) reasoned defense of atheism, even if we are constantly being told that belief in a Judeo-Christian deity is an anachronism and that we should instead embrace Allah, Buddha or Jeff Bezos, depending on our particular view of divinity.

    Butler-Gallie has a parish in Charlbury, many Americans’ favorite place in the Cotswolds

    These two new books deal with religion, and its works, in wholly different but pleasingly complementary fashions. Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies’s God, the Science, the Evidence has already been a huge international hit. It purports to provide a scientific explanation for the existence of God, and Bolloré and Bonassies come armed with an impressive selection of names in the scientific field, most notably Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Wilson, who says of the book “if the universe had a beginning, we cannot avoid the question of creation.” All very true. Yet, for my money, Fergus Butler-Gallie’s careful examination of Christianity, told through the narratives of 12 churches in different parts of the world, offers a more humane and richer examination of religious faith. If there is any justice, this should be his breakout book in the United States.

    Butler-Gallie has written three books before, a couple of witty anecdotal histories of priests such as himself and a memoir, Touching Cloth, and has established a name for himself in his native Britain as an unusually wise and perceptive commentator on ecclesiastical matters high and low. He was one of the first clergymen to call for the resignation of the disgraced Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and, not long after that, the prelate’s head duly rolled. When he isn’t writing books or intervening in church business, Butler-Gallie has a parish in Charlbury, many Americans’ favorite place in the Cotswolds: his local pub, the Bull, has managed to bridge the gap between Democrats and Republicans by playing host to both Kamala Harris and J.D. Vance (separately) in recent months.

    Butler-Gallie includes his own parish church, St. Mary’s, in the book’s epilogue, and as he writes of his discoveries, “I have learned that churches have the infinite capacity to surprise.” Of the dozen structures that he includes, all of them have elements of the unexpected, whether it’s the famous (St. Peter’s in Rome; Canterbury Cathedral in England; the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem) or the lesser-known. I certainly wasn’t familiar with the Kirishitan Hokora church in Kasuga, Japan before I read Twelve Churches, but Butler-Gallie writes extremely well about the way in which this small, remote basilica became redolent of the early reach of Christianity into Japan in the 17th century, where the faith was conducted in great secrecy due to the likelihood of persecution. It is a mark of his book’s intellectual reach and curiosity that this then segues into a comparison with St. Nicholas Church in Aberdeen and a conversation with The Spectator’s British editor, Michael Gove.

    Twelve Churches is clearly aimed at a wide international readership and American readers are likely to be particularly fascinated by the two chapters on the varying kinds of worship their country has produced. The ninth chapter focuses on the site of the First Meeting House in Salem, Massachusetts, where Butler-Gallie writes about the arrival of Christianity in the US in 1628, and then the intrinsic difficulties that arose when the doctrine of purity that was so key to the early settlers became compromised by the supposed outbreak of witchcraft.

    The events in Salem will be familiar to many thanks to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, but Butler-Gallie places the events of 1962 in intelligent and fresh context by arguing that we should not sneer at the mass panic that was engendered as the primitive workings of a nascent society, but instead to look at the way in which witchcraft was seen as part of the fabric of faith. As he writes, “the very natural and the supernatural, the deeply irrational and the cold systematics of legality all clashed together in a heady brew which became a byword, both then and since, for a community turning itself inside out in the quest to be pure.”

    It is a different kind of purity that he explores when he heads to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It is here that Butler-Gallie shifts from closely detailed and well-written religious history and into more unsettling social territory. The church, with its African-American congregation, was the victim of a Ku Klux Klan bombing on September 15, 1963, which killed four young girls attending Sunday School there. The event would come to galvanize the Civil Rights movement nationwide.

    Yet it is also undeniably the case that if God would allow such an atrocity to occur, and take the lives of innocent girls – in an attack where it took years to bring the perpetrators to justice, so strict was the code of omertà in Alabama’s white community – then questions about the fallibility (or worse) of the deity have to be asked.

    Twelve Churches is a hugely accomplished and endlessly readable book, rich in detail

    Although Butler-Gallie is too nuanced a writer to make such an observation, the kind of Christianity currently practiced by the African-American community is more elemental and vital than that pursued by urban white congregations, with far greater emphasis on the physical presence of Jesus expressed through music and charismatic preaching. Therefore the attack on the church – which continues to thrive to this day – was less a motiveless atrocity and more a means of bringing together the community, which finds its parallel in Butler-Gallie’s examination of how the early Christians in Rome were galvanized, rather than dispersed, by the martyrdom of St. Peter.

    Twelve Churches is a hugely accomplished and endlessly readable book, rich in historical and ecclesiastical detail. If it has flaws, they are that there is such an accumulation of this detail that at times it becomes overwhelming. I read Butler-Gallie’s previous book in an afternoon, but this took a week of close attention. Certainly, I could have done with more humor – it isn’t that it’s po-faced, but given how witty a writer Butler-Gallie is, a few more laughs would have been appreciated. Yet this is a significant achievement in every regard, and represents its youthful author’s successful application to join the big leagues of historical biography, along with the likes of Simon Schama and Ron Chernow. This is a wise and humane volume that should appeal to everyone, of all faiths and none.

    Late in the book, Butler-Gallie writes of perhaps the world’s best-known atheist, Richard Dawkins, that he has shifted from straightforward contempt for religion toward an understanding of faith, even if he is not (yet) a practitioner of it. In Dawkins’s own words, “I like to live in a culturally Christian country, even if I don’t believe a single word of Christian faith.” I suspect that he would find both Twelve Churches and God, the Science, the Evidence highly worthwhile. In the case of the latter, Bolloré and Bonnassies have marshaled an impressive display of factual information – and a generous number of experts – to make up for some of the book’s loopier forays into speculative territory.

    But they omit any sense of what the point of religion might be if the existence of a deity can be proved beyond debate. The reason why the Gospels, in particular, remain so vital and so fascinating is that the figure of Jesus that emerges from them is rich in appeal and interest, a man (or son of God) who can announce, with heroic individualism writ large, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

    Larkin, you feel, would have observed the appearance of Christ with muted skepticism, and Bolloré and Bonnassies would have rushed to weigh and measure him. It is the greatest compliment I can pay Butler-Gallie, on the evidence of his thoughtful and wise book, that he – a man of God as he is – would be the only one to sit down and learn from him, instead.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 29, 2025 World edition.

  • Jason Bateman breaks bad in Black Rabbit

    Jason Bateman breaks bad in Black Rabbit

    When Bryan Cranston staggered on-screen in the opening scene of Breaking Bad in 2008, stumbling out of a crashed RV dressed only in his underpants, and addressed the camera with, “My name is Walter Hartwell White…to all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt,” he immediately changed perceptions of who he was as an actor. Previously, he was best known for being the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle, and despite some effective straight performances, most thought of him as a comedic performer, rather than the star of what became the most talked-about crime drama series since The Wire.

    Jason Bateman would, one presumes, like to follow Cranston’s lead. He broke out in Arrested Development, in which he played the put-upon Michael Bluth, perpetually beset by the antics of his eccentric-to-insane family. Although the character was nominally the straight man, Bateman’s peerless comic timing saw him translate his television success to a decent film career, with good parts in big films such as Juno and Hancock. Yet he was usually cast as the lovable nice guy, playing the less interesting roles while his more eccentric co-stars walked away with the pictures.

    The first real attempt on his part to escape this typecasting was in the crime drama Ozark, in which he played a financial advisor who finds himself laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel. Not only did Bateman manage to find nuance and interest in the part of Marty Byrde, using his natural charm and charisma to perverted ends, but he also demonstrated an aptitude for directing, helming several episodes and winning an Emmy for his work on “Reparations.” Moving to the darker side clearly agreed with Bateman, because he was a spookily effective villain in the otherwise ephemeral Taron Egerton airport thriller, Carry-On, delivering pep talks to the protagonist even as he makes his life hell.

    It’s unsurprising, then, that in the new Netflix crime series Black Rabbit, Bateman – who directed the opening two episodes – has seized upon the chance to explore his inner nefariousness. He plays Vince Friedken, who initially appears to be nothing more than a small-time scam artist, trying to sell some (presumably stolen) coins to a pair of thieves who swiftly rob him in turn. Vince might look like a hobo, all long hair and straggly beard, but he’s far smarter than he looks: disposing of one of the thieves, he hot-tails it to New York, where he meets up once again with his estranged brother, Jake (Jude Law), the successful owner of a bar-club-restaurant named Black Rabbit.

    Zach Baylin & Kate Susman’s drama might not be wildly original, but it at least offers some novel twists on formula. Much of the tension in the first episode does not revolve around violence and betrayal, but about what the New York Times restaurant critic will make of the food at Black Rabbit. Vince isn’t simply a deadbeat junkie but a talented and once-successful restaurateur who was waylaid by the pharmaceutical stimulants that one too many ambitious and successful men ensure. And Jake, shown in the tense opening scene being confronted with an armed robbery at the restaurant, is clearly hiding his own secrets underneath his suave exterior.

    How this resolves itself over the eight episodes plays out partially as you’d expect and partially in new ways. It’s a novel touch, for instance, to have the crime lord Vince played by the deaf actor Troy Kotsur (an Oscar winner for Coda who has not been seen on screens often enough since) and even if the restaurant business stuff feels post-Bear in its machinations, it is at least engaging. All of which means that all the bad men waving guns and shouting – and foot chases through the seedier parts of New York – do at least have a touch of freshness to them: appropriately enough, given the Black Rabbit’s culinary stock-in-trade.

    But this is, again, Bateman’s show. Now 56, and with a misspent youth (which he once described as being “like Risky Business for ten years”) firmly behind him, he has an interestingly weathered face that makes him stand out from his more Botoxed peers. Law does what he does very well, but it is his co-star who stands out, bringing depth and humanity to what might have been a thin part, and ensuring that Black Rabbit is very much worth catching.

  • How Princess Kate and Melania Trump bonded

    How Princess Kate and Melania Trump bonded

    President Trump arrives back in the United States today, and Keir Starmer will have returned to 10 Downing Street breathing a sigh of relief that this unprecedented second state visit went about as well as it could have done. However, there may be different feelings in Buckingham Palace and the other royal residences. Certainly, Trump’s open admiration – even obsequiousness – for King Charles, who he described as “a great gentleman [and] a great king” – would have been received well. But the King himself maintained a poker face throughout the visit, with his only pointed remarks at the state banquet about the need for a lasting peace in Ukraine giving anything away about his own thoughts.

    Trump’s typically unorthodox and free-association speech at the same dinner, however, contained one surprising touch, when he remarked about how the Princess of Wales was “so radiant and so healthy and so beautiful.” On the one hand, the implicit nod to her having gone into remission after her cancer treatment might be seen as a thoughtful, even humane allusion. On the other, the president’s obvious admiration for Catherine, whom he sat next to during the banquet, might be seen as tipping over into straightforward infatuation. In one of the pictures released of the event, she is looking at Trump with a mixture of amusement and slight bafflement; he, meanwhile, is grinning as if he is the luckiest man in the room, if not the world.

    Entertaining visiting dignitaries is par for the course for the Princess of Wales, however, and a little gallantry from the 79-year-old American is to be expected. A more unexpected offshoot of the trip, however, is the genuine rapport that appears to have grown up between Catherine and Melania Trump. It might have been expected that the bulk of the hosting duties would have gone to the Queen. But Camilla is recovering from a bout of sinusitis, and so it was the Princess of Wales and the First Lady who headed to meet a bunch of scouts in the grounds of Frogmore House, which proved a surprisingly auspicious event.

    Dwayne Fields, the aptly named chief scout, told the Times that:

    From what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were to go away and collaborate on something in the US…I would love to see the Squirrels section exported to the US and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs Trump goes back and talks about what she’s seen, what she’s experienced and what she saw others gaining from the experience.

    Fields also observed that the First Lady and Catherine found “a lot to talk about.” Certainly, in pictures released of the event, the often stern-looking Melania seemed as relaxed and cheery as she has ever been in public, telling the scouts that her favorite insect was a “ladybug” – “the first ladybug!”, one child quipped, showing a future as a raconteur – and thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to bounce balls around a parachute with the children.

    There were many reasons to be relieved that the trip went so well. As one palace source recounted:

    The visiting party was very easy to deal with and very appreciative of the hospitality. All elements of the pomp and pageantry created an awesome spectacle. You can tell from the expression of the principals how much they appreciated it.

    Full credit will, of course, be given to the King and Queen, as it should be, but a great deal of kudos should also go to Catherine, whose re-emergence into public life and the spotlight this year has demonstrated how much she was missed last year. Charming both the Trumps, in wholly separate ways, is a tough gig, but she managed it with flying colors. Radiant, healthy and beautiful, she might very well be, but a savvy operator, too. And if a “womance” of sorts beckons with the First Lady, that might end up being the most special relationship of all.

  • Trump’s state visit to the UK could not be going better

    Trump’s state visit to the UK could not be going better

    So, the Donald was on his best behavior after all. There had been rumors flying around that President Trump would use his speech at the formal banquet that has been thrown in his honor by King Charles to make some pointed reference to free speech and its perceived absence thereof in Britain today. In the event, there was nothing but a series of emollient statements of praise for his hosts, their family and the country he was visiting, as well as, of course, himself.

    This threw up some incongruities – who would ever have imagined hearing Trump allude to Locke and Orwell? But his sentiments were warm (only partially reduced by his less-than-fluent delivery, reading at times haltingly off what looked like a giant prompt book). As such, they would have gone down well with those in St George’s Hall in Windsor Castle and far beyond.

    In truth, Trump’s state banquet was never expected to be a controversial or difficult event. Whether the King had wanted to host this second, unprecedented state visit for the American president or not, he was never going to make any public protestation, and so the speech of welcome that he gave his guest was typically warm and eloquent. He talked of the “enduring bond” between the two countries, in language soon echoed by Trump, and made a good joke, saying, in an allusion to George III and the War of Independence: “It is remarkable to think just how far we have come. My five times great-grandfather did not spare his words when he spoke of the revolutionary leaders.”

    Still, both men had their own agendas in mind, too, and they were expressed in polite yet pointed ways. The King talked with vigor of the enduring special relationship, but also – in lines presumably suggested by the government – he observed that “Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.” Was there the slightest hint of irony when he praised Trump – a man obviously angling for the Nobel Peace Prize – and his “personal commitment to finding solutions to some of the world’s most intractable conflicts”? There almost certainly was.

    And even in his peroration, when Charles spoke of how “in renewing our bond tonight, we do so with unshakeable trust in our friendship and in our shared commitment to independence and liberty”, there was the hint of a suggestion that this commitment might present itself in rather different ways. Talk of Trump’s attempts to protect the environment may have been more wishful thinking on Charles’s part than demonstrable fact.

    The President, meanwhile, has had a splendidly indulgent day of watching military displays in his honor, all of which have taken place out of public view in the grounds of Windsor Castle, so as to avoid the embarrassment of any protests marring his fun. Therefore, when he delivered his remarks, they came from a place of apparent contentment – hence the sincerity of his warm words about the royals. Nevertheless, he was still unable to resist a spot of self-praise as he announced that America has gone from being “a very sick country” to the “hottest anywhere in the world”. The King, to his immense credit, kept his best poker face throughout.

    Still, everyone involved in organizing this state visit will, rightly, congratulate themselves on how well the day went. Even the gray, overcast weather did not turn into the downpour that occasionally threatened to materialize, and the pageantry and glitz on display (at a rumored cost of £15 million for the entire event) show that, when Britain attempts to put on a performance like this, it usually succeeds.

    The political aspects of Trump’s visit come today, and they will be harder-won than this largely decorative display of soft power. But this coming together of two very different men, with very different values, over watercress panna cotta and ballotine of Norfolk chicken could hardly have gone better, either for them or their respective countries. And Charles will also know that the occasion will not – cannot – occur again, either, which may have made the whole thing easier to bear with suitably well-bred equanimity.