James Jackson

Jun 13, 2024 | theguardian.com | James Jackson

With its high-tempo use of Multicultural London English and blend of drum’n’bass and acoustic guitar, the song Five by Bedford-based rapper Pat is instantly recognisable as a product of the UK’s contemporary rap scene. Yet even the most fast-mouthed stars of British grime would probably struggle to integrate the word niezapowiedzianych (“unannounced”) into their rhyme schemes.

May 19, 2024 | quillette.com | Benny Morris |Izabella Tabarovsky |Allan Stratton |James Jackson

Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, now in its eighth month, following the Islamists’ savage invasion of southern Israel on 7 October, appears to have gone badly wrong both militarily and politically and there is no end in sight. Israel, a small country with a small Jewish population and small military-industrial base, is not built for long wars. Since 1948, its wars have been remarkably short: a week in 1956, six days in 1967, 18 days in 1973.

May 17, 2024 | quillette.com | Izabella Tabarovsky |Allan Stratton |James Jackson |Matthew Adelstein

Editor’s Note: The following essay first appeared in Areo Magazine in March 2017 and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. In this piece, Izabella Tabarovsky describes the stultifying atmosphere of conformity, cancel culture, and enforced speech among progressive leftists following the Black Lives Matter marches and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. She finds the speech climate eerily reminiscent of that of the Soviet Union of her youth.

May 16, 2024 | quillette.com | Allan Stratton |James Jackson |Matthew Adelstein |Kevin Mims

The Fall Guy juggles the genres of thriller, mystery, and romantic comedy with aplomb—the thriller is exciting, the mystery is clever, and the rom-com is sexy and funny. Together, they make for an exuberant celebration of the performers who risk their lives for a “gag” (the professional’s term for a stunt).

May 15, 2024 | quillette.com | James Jackson |Matthew Adelstein |Kevin Mims |Ronald A. Lindsay

“There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book,” Oscar Wilde wrote in the preface to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, “books are well written or badly written, that is all.” Wilde was correct. Moral considerations should be suspended when evaluating a work of art. A novel may contain unpleasant characters, but it does not follow that the novelist himself is immoral for creating those characters in the first place.