Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson: Imagine the scene when Sol Kerzner comes face to face with a typical Beswick urchin

Published: 03 February 2007

Gangs of four-year-olds roamed the precinct demanding protection money

Howard Jacobson: Imagine what Charles Dickens would have done with a character like Jade Goody

Published: 27 January 2007

While he saw qualities in the downtrodden, he did not confuse misfortune with virtue

Howard Jacobson: 'Big Brother' encourages something worse than racism

Published: 20 January 2007

The debate as to whether Jade and her super-dumb cohorts are racist is not worth having

Howard Jacobson: It probably isn't wise to look to Robin Cook for inspiration when writing your epitaph

Published: 13 January 2007

Why do I wish the Iraq war had not been intermingled with his mortal remains?

Howard Jacobson: Even the wicked can show some dignity, no matter how much we try to deprive them of it

Published: 06 January 2007

It was written across Saddam's face when he declined the black hood and accepted the noose

Howard Jacobson: There is nothing to fear when you reach the seventh age of man. On the contrary

Published: 30 December 2006

Leave aside their proximity to death and the old have the best of it. They know what they know

Howard Jacobson: It's official... if you take the trouble to read Shakespeare, your brain will thank you for it

Published: 23 December 2006

Forgive my jubilation, but I have been waiting for this scientific proof for a long time

Howard Jacobson: Be careful whose history you deny, for to hate them you must steep yourself in them

Published: 16 December 2006

There is no historian of the Holocaust That Never Was who isn't a Jew-hater first

Howard Jacobson: Sometimes a bit of irrational behaviour can stop you from acting like a plonker

Published: 09 December 2006

Even those without imagination of disaster know you don't go round telling bosses where to stuff it

Howard Jacobson: Go chasing rainbows by all means. But don't be surprised when disappointment sets in

Published: 25 November 2006

Of the words we devalue by the hour, 'dream' is going down the pan quicker than most

Howard Jacobson: Fashion is a farce when an expensive handbag has to look cheap and nasty

Published: 18 November 2006

And the fact that you've shelled out a thousand pounds on it proves just what a good joke it is

Howard Jacobson: Tony Blair can't help but look both ways in the matter of Saddam Hussein's execution

Published: 11 November 2006

Allow him to be in two places at once is all I say. Grant him, if nothing else, the privilege of ambivalence

Howard Jacobson: The Ten Commandments would have faded long ago if they sounded like a self-help book

Published: 04 November 2006

What is revealed in the grandeur of the writing is the grandeur of man's conception of his being

Howard Jacobson: We don't need scientists to point out the obvious: men are enslaved by gadgets

Published: 28 October 2006

"There's a bit of testicle," I heard someone say on Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time last week, "at the bottom of our most sublime feelings." The quotation was from Denis Diderot, philosopher, critic, encyclopaedist, discreet pornographer. If I could leave this week's column at that, I would. Reader, there's a bit of testicle at the bottom of most things. Now good day to you.

Howard Jacobson: Why I'm not complaining, even if 'Jane Eyre' is the greatest castration story ever told

Published: 21 October 2006

A once-proud, licentious man is reduced to a state of sightless dependency so he is fit to marry

Howard Jacobson: The veil can induce impure thoughts, but the opposite can be true of the hen-night floozy

Published: 14 October 2006

The wimple, far from keeping me at a decent distance, invites me where I have no business

Howard Jacobson: What secrets of womanhood are revealed when you buy a giant flat-screen television

Published: 07 October 2006

If ever there was an argument for ignorance of the times we live in, Trinny and Susannah are it

Howard Jacobson: It would do our political system no harm to import a little of Latham's louche demotic

Published: 30 September 2006

The health of the nation would have been better served had Brown and Blair long ago called each other toss-bag

Howard Jacobson: Whatever the faith, someone somewhere has felt the cold edge of its contempt teachers should have been put on a sex offenders list?

Published: 23 September 2006

It's like watching two schoolyard bullies, suddenly forgetting you are there and belting each other

Howard Jacobson: Note to disaffected youth... Pick up a table tennis bat and strike a blow for world peace

Published: 16 September 2006

Name one synchronised swimmer who has plotted to blow up an aircraft or fly into a tower block If being obsessed with yourself because you are good at ping pong is the worst you do, is that so terrible?

Howard Jacobson: If a certain culture is scrutinised and found wanting, then don't shoot the messenger

Published: 02 September 2006

Offence is not the issue here. Racism is the play's subject, the thing it is about, not the thing it evinces

Howard Jacobson: You would never think that Mick Jagger and Rab Butler had anything in common

Published: 26 August 2006

Forget all you've read about wild old rockers. Forget the weed, the waywardness, the sexual excesses

Howard Jacobson: If you want to know the source of anti-western propaganda, look no further than ourselves

Published: 19 August 2006

There is hysteria abroad. It now looks normal to talk of Bush and Blair as if they were Stalin and Pol Pot

Howard Jacobson: If Richard Ingrams wants us to declare our ethnic identity, I'm very happy to oblige

Published: 12 August 2006

Is there a reader so gullible that he cannot assess the worth of an argument on its own merits?

Howard Jacobson: It's a strange sensation, but 'Big Brother' contestants bring out my avuncular side

Published: 05 August 2006

I feel a sympathy for them as victims - as the lost souls of our foolish world and as the dupes of Channel 4

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