Prose

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 warFreethinker, 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 KhayyámThe 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