Although ostensibly a means of securing sustenance and pleasuring the palate, food often has the capacity to bring out the nationalist in people. Regard the manner in which the French boast of their excellence in the kitchen, haughtily deriding the Americans for their sorry excuse for a national dish: McDonald's. Witness Italians sneer at the imitation pizzas found in Britain and the US, or how Indian visitors recoil in horror [...]

One of the most surprising successes of 2005 has been a previously obscure puzzle that we all know as Sudoku. First popularised in Britain by the Daily Mail and the Times just over a year ago, it now features in most newspapers. There are magazines and books devoted to it, and numerous derivatives have begun to flourish - Samurai Sudoku, Killer Sudoku, Kakuro and Hitori. Everyone seems to agree that [...]

We live in a time in which we are exhorted to worship or "live in harmony" with nature. Human beings are seen as despoilers of the earth who seem interested merely in causing wars and wrecking the environment. Many, adopting James Lovelock's Gaia theory, believe that humans are a parasitic presence on the planet. Our misanthropic consensus deems that which is man-made "bad" and that which is natural "good".

This [...]

Nothing seems to expose the cleavage between progressives and conservatives better than opinions on modern art. While the left is likely to lavish praise on the latest Turner Prize winner for his or her "challenging" and "thought-provoking" message, the right tends to lament the absence of the aesthetic in contemporary non-representational art and cackle despairingly at the charlatanism of its practitioners.

So when a panel of experts voted Marcel Duchamp's [...]

You may have expected godless folk such as myself to welcome a proposal from Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, that schools should teach atheism, humanism and other "secular philosophies" in religious education classes. But Clarke is misguided, I fear. He will give succour to the erroneous notion that atheism is "just another religion". In my view, atheism should not be taught in RE classes. More to the point, I think [...]

When one hears the expression "cultural imperialism", one usually thinks of the ubiquitous presence of Americana. Corporations such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Disney are routinely charged with trampling on indigenous industries, showing contempt for different cultures and rendering our high streets bland, soulless clones. The French may be the most vocal agitators in this area, but the British are by no means averse to such protest, as the popularity [...]

With a construction company forced to pull out of building a vivisection research lab in Oxford, and with Jerry Vlasak, a leading American animal rights campaigner, due to address 300 young militants at a training camp in Kent in September (provided the Home Secretary doesn't ban him), there has never been a better time for animal rights.

But what about vegetable rights? No, don't laugh - and you won't if [...]

Is John Kerry, Democratic front-runner for the US presidency, an Irish American or not? His name certainly sounds Irish, and numerous US publications have stated that he is of Irish descent. Yet last year his spokeswoman, Kelley Benander, said that Kerry "has never indicated to anyone that he was Irish, and corrected people over the years who assumed he was".

Perhaps he would never have needed to issue such a [...]

Upon Michel Foucault's death, 20 years ago this month, the historian Paul Veyne wrote in Le Monde that the philosopher's work was "the most important event of thought in our century". The rest of the world was all too ready to agree, and Foucault has become one of the most celebrated philosophers of our times, lauded as the godfather of postmodernism and extending his influence widely and deeply in academe.

In the imagination of many English people, the Irish are a cheerful, rebellious folk who care little for officialdom, bad government or oppressive laws. They are also deemed to possess the finest bars in the world, pubs that epitomise their hedonistic, happy-go-lucky disposition.

This is the Ireland of Pete McCarthy's travelogues, of television programmes such as Ballykissangel and Father Ted, and countless newspaper travel pull-outs. Being half-Irish myself, I rather [...]