Author: Jeff Fountain

This year’s performances of Johan Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion by choirs and orchestras across Europe have an extra dimension of pathos as Ukraine suffers under unprovoked aggression.  Considered one of the greatest musical works ever composed, the sacred oratorio depicts the false accusations, lies and unjustified suffering inflicted on Jesus, ending in his crucifixion and burial.…

With Churchillian defiance and against all odds, Vladimir Zelensky and the Ukrainian people are defending their families, fatherland and freedom on land, sea and in the air. This is their darkest yet finest hour.  Despite the ruthless destruction of the children’s hospital in Mariopol and other tragic atrocities against civilian targets, the Ukrainians refuse to…

Andrey Zubov is a brave and honest man.  As one of Russia’s leading historians and political scientists, he dared to speak out against the annexation of the Crimea in 2014, comparing Putin’s invasion with Hitler’s Austrian anschluss. He was temporarily sacked from his professorial chair at the Moscow State Institute of Interational Relations (MGIMO). Last…

Mr Putin’s messianic pretensions as saviour of Russian civilisation have deep religious and historical roots.  Yet our western secular world tends to filter out religion and pre-Enlightenment history as irrelevant. Hence our surprise at the Hitleresque attack this week, reminiscent of the Nazi occupation of Sudetenland in 1938, or the blitzkrieg on Rotterdam in May…

Bans on conversion therapy are being passed feverishly in countries around the world following a United Nations directive against the ‘inherently degrading and discriminatory’ practice. Canada, France, Germany and twenty-eight of the United States of America have passed bans, with Britain and the Netherlands in process against such therapy. According to the UN, it ‘inflict[s]…