John Maier

Pleased to have provided Peter with “a rare first-hand account of something important — the cultural revolution at work in detail”

"It may suit Nigel Farage’s sense of political theatre to present Reform’s newly organised frontbench as a 'shadow cabinet' in waiting. But in reality, not even Britain’s uncodified constitution recognises entities as penumbral as Reform’s top team". The Times view on Reform UK Link Below

‘A little research suggests that whole epochs within the novel hit the cutting-room floor’. Read @johnmaier_ on the new ‘Wuthering Heights’ 👇 buff.ly/ZyGUBt1

Hilarious and acute from @johnmaier_ : the Wuthering Heights film as "an attempt to depict the erotic shadow cast by the book in the mind of a half-remembered adolescent reader."

Terrible news. David was a fantastically astute editor – il miglior fabbro. We had the most wonderful dinner a few weeks before his death. He was as eloquent in person as on the page, and full of the wildest anecdotes about literary London and its biggest egos. He will be missed.

Went to see Melania, a future cult classic in the making , and wrote about it for @unherd unherd.com/2026/02/melani…

This is a rather marvellous statement of what you would think would be obvious. Still tho, I commend it to you as a lunchtime read.

Here's a link to the Amicus Curiae Brief written by @johnmaier_ @dfkodsi, some fairly eminent philosophers (and some jobbing academics) about the Supreme Court cases. supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/2…

If you listen to @NPR you're likely to be bemused by the SCOTUS case about trans athletes. Apparently "two girls" have been "banned from playing sports" and "the research just simply doesn't back...up" any claims of physiological advantage. npr.org/2026/01/11/nx-…

An excellent leader in today’s Times. It’s constitutionally legitimate for the House of Lords to vote down the assisted suicide bill. That this badly drafted law is coming a cropper in the upper house is because of the government’s refusal to take responsibility.

The Times View on the assisted dying bill: a poorly drafted, unworkable piece of legislation that the Lords should put out of its misery thetimes.com/comment/the-ti…

Scrutiny has revealed the assisted dying bill’s terminal failings thetimes.com/article/863186…

“Though in her more emollient moods Ms Leadbeater has welcomed the “robust debate and scrutiny” her bill would face in the Lords, she has since criticised the opposition it has met with there as “cruel” and unnecessary. Peers are being accused of exploiting procedure to stall the bill’s passage into law. Such allegations savour of hypocrisy given Ms Leadbeater’s own procedural gamesmanship.” The Times’s view on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill. Link below.

"Addressing the Commons on November 29 last year, Kim Leadbeater reassured wavering MPs that to support her assisted dying bill would be a “vote to continue the debate” in the House of Lords, where the bill would “no doubt” face “further robust debate and scrutiny”. Now, with disconcerting sleight of hand, supporters of the bill are attempting to smear the revising chamber’s attempt to scrutinise it as anti-democratic obstructionism. Such political gamesmanship is unfortunately in keeping with the haphazard and underhand way in which the passage of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been managed to date." The Times's View on the passage of Kim Leadbeater's Assisted Dying Bill. Link Below.

Last month's leader cited by @michaelgove in today's Lords debate "Now, with disconcerting sleight of hand, supporters of the bill are attempting to smear the revising chamber’s attempt to scrutinise it as anti-democratic obstructionism. Such political gamesmanship is unfortunately in keeping with the haphazard and underhand way in which the passage of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been managed to date. These tactics ill-befit such a serious issue."

"What good are the arts? To point merely to the enjoyment they give rise to strikes many as frivolous... Some have argued optimistically that the arts may have an ennobling effect on their audience, but pursue that argument and, according to Godwin’s law, it won’t be long before someone mentions one particularly well-known 20th-century Austrian water-colourist and his political fellow-travelers, and you will be back at square one." My review of 'Art Cure' in this weekend's @thetimes - Link Below..

"Adopting progressive causes in the spirit of a monolithic company ideology was cloying for customers, oppressive for employees and enraging for those whose pensions need shareholder value rather than trite sloganeering. The politics of Pride has, moreover, become bound up with a political agenda: one which tends to involve the promotion of gender ideology and hostility towards sex-realist feminists. Those are subjects of lively social contestation. Even among gay and lesbian people there is much internal disagreement about them. It is simply inappropriate for firms to adopt the pretence that there is only one enlightened view to be had." The Times view on the commercialisation of Pride. Link below.