Yvonne Ridley

Political opportunist Nicolas Sarkozy forgot three fundamental lessons when he decided to denounce the burka. The first one is that men should stay well clear of becoming embroiled in expressing opinions on women’s clothes, unless of course you happen to be called Lacroix, Gaultier, Lagerfeld or Ghesquiere. This was a lesson learned the hard way by [...]

Long before I became a Muslim, the North African country of Tunisia used to evoke two images in my mind … a sunny holiday destination for drunken chavs* and a temporary home base for Palestinian leader-in-exile, Yassir Arafat. I don’t suppose you could imagine two more different images than soccer-mad, binge-drinking Westerners and the revolutionary PLO [...]