2023
Essays
Charitable aims? – cover story, New Humanist, vol. 138, no. 2, Summer 2023
Reviews
Forthcoming: review of Brown, Nash and Lynch, The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain (Bloomsbury, 2023), New Humanist
Acropolis Now: review of What the Greeks Did for Us by Tony Spawforth, Literary Review, April 2023
Interviews
Can sentientism save the world? Interview with Jamie Woodhouse, Freethinker, 12 May 2023
British Islam and the crisis of ‘wokeism’ in universities – interview with Steven Greer, Freethinker, 29 March 2023
‘You have to know your own mind’ – interview with Laura Dodsworth, Freethinker, 10 February 2023
2022
Articles for various publications
Flying spaghetti monsters, on the ‘religion’ of Pastafarianism, New Humanist, Autumn 2022
Out of Aristotle’s Shadow – review of Looking for Theophrastus: Travels in Search of a Lost Philosopher by Laura Beatty, Literary Review, Issue 508, June 2022
Faith in education – on the problems with faith schools in Britain, New Humanist, Vol. 137, No. 1, Spring 2022
The Freethinker
‘The defence of liberty is a state of mind’ – interview with Jonathan Sumption, Part I, 22 December 2022
Race: the most difficult subject of all? – interview with Inaya Folarin Iman, founder of the Equiano Project and former presenter on GB News, 14 December 2022
Freethought in the 21st century – edited version of an interview I gave to Liberas, a Belgian institute of liberalism and freethought, 1 December 2022
‘A godless neo-religion’ – interview with Helen Joyce, author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, 18 November 2022
‘The light of democratic scrutiny was switched off for two years’ – interview with Adam Wagner, author of Emergency State, 11 November 2022
Civil liberties month at the Freethinker – editorial, 3 October 2022
The resurgence of enlightenment in southern India – interview with Bhavan Rajagopalan, Freethinker, 6 September 2022
‘We need to move from identity politics to a politics of solidarity’ – interview with Pragna Patel, Freethinker, 15 July 2022
‘An animal is a description of ancient worlds’ – interview with Richard Dawkins, Freethinker, 1 July 2022
Reading list against nuclear war – Freethinker, 29 June 2022
Blasphemy Month at the Freethinker, 7 June 2022
The price of criticising Islam in northern Nigeria: imprisonment or death – Freethinker, 6 June 2022
What I believe – interview with Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK and President of Humanists International, Freethinker, 10 May 2022
A view from Kyiv: Ordinary life during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – interview, Freethinker, 16 April 2022
Free speech in Britain: a losing battle? – Freethinker, 31 March 2022
Mubarak Bala: update on a ‘blasphemer’ in Nigeria – Freethinker, 19 March 2022
‘The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech’ – interview with Maryam Namazie, Freethinker, 12 March 2022
Bishops in the Lords: Why are they still there? – Freethinker, 10 March 2022
Porcus Sapiens, Freethinker, 5 March 2022
Letter from the Editor, Freethinker, 5 March 2022
2021
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám – The Idler, No. 80, September–October 2021
Blasphemy in the classroom – on teachers’ lack of response to the Batley Grammar case and how to teach ‘blasphemous’ materials, New Humanist, Vol. 136, No. 3, Autumn 2021. Selected as one of the New Humanist’s top 20 articles of 2021.
Lessons from Britain’s first atheist MP – on Charles Bradlaugh, blasphemy, and the Scottish Hate Crime Act, New Humanist, 20 May 2021
We Must Cultivate Our Gardens – review of John Sellars, The Fourfold Remedy: Epicurus and the Art of Happiness; Sarah Sands, The Interior Silence: 10 Lessons from Monastic Life, Literary Review, March 2021
2020
Porkers & Pissheads: The Pig War by John Placentius; How to Drink: A Classical Guide to the Art of Imbibing, by Vincent Obsopoeus (both translated from Latin by Michael Fontaine) – Literary Review, April 2020
Should lessons on sex and religion take parents’ wishes into account? – Spectator Life, 12 March 2020
2019
Three Voices of Mauritius – a literary experiment in The Fortnightly Review, 3 August 2019
Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher, by Armand D’Angour – The Spectator, 30 March 2019
2018
Metamorphica, by Zachary Mason – The Spectator, 29 September 2018
Latin: Dead or alive? – the sad state of classics in schools, from a former teacher’s perspective, The Spectator Schools Supplement, 8 September 2018
The Best Food Festivals in 2018 – Spectator Life, 19 July 2018
Gods, Guys and Guns. A review of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – National Secular Society website, 14 June 2018
Mary and the Witch’s Flower – Review (anime by Studio Ponoc), The Flaneur, May 2018
2017 and earlier
How classics can teach about teaching – brief piece on my approach to teaching, Bright Young Things blog, 2016
Time to brush up the public image? – on the shipping industry’s relationship with the media, Maritime Risk International, 2016
E.C. Park (2014). Review of ‘Modernity and Plato. Two Paradigms of Rationality’, Classical Review (New Series), 64, pp. 610-612
Blow Up Media Studies – review of Toby Miller, Blow Up the Humanities, in The Oxonian Review, 17 February 2013
Ashes to Ashmolean – on the reopened Ashmolean Museum, with photography by Akshat Rathi, The Oxonian Review, 9 November 2009
A Book By Its Cover, for The Oxonian Review: on the self-presentation of books, judging by cover alone, including Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth, and Alex Danchev’s On Art and War and Terror.
2009 – an editor of ORbits, The Oxonian Review’s new online section