I don’t believe in keeping my guests waiting to eat, so it all starts with a first course to more than take the edge off the appetite: chips from Frituur No 1 in the centre of Antwerp, fried twice in beef tallow, scalding hot but cooled with mayonnaise. The fries...
Other Writing
Articles from the New York Times, Forbes, Wired and beyond – any piece that isn’t one of my columns.
We will not understand Covid until we give up debating it
Confused by the contradictory claims about the dangers posed by coronavirus? Cut through the fog with this one weird trick: stop trying to win an argument. I realise that such advice does not sit easily with the way culture has been going in Britain in general of...
Can the pandemic help us fix our technology problem?
We have a technology problem. By that, I mean that we currently lack the technology to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. We don’t have a cheap, easy, self-administered test. We lack effective medicines. Above all, we...
Book(s) of the Week 20: The Next Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy
Okay, this week I'm plugging my own brand new book, The Next Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy. At least, a little bit. But I have some other books to tell you about too. One of the joys of writing this book was to be able to pick up two or three wonderful...
The Next Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy – book and talk
"Endlessly insightful and full of surprises -- exactly what you would expect from Tim Harford." Bill Bryson I'm delighted to announce the launch of my new book, The Next Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy. It's a sequel to the original in which I presented a...
Why we fail to prepare for disasters
You can’t say that nobody saw it coming. For years, people had warned that New Orleans was vulnerable. The Houston Chronicle reported that 250,000 people would be stranded if a major hurricane struck, with the low-lying city left 20ft underwater. New Orleans’s...
Remembering Peter Sinclair
Peter Sinclair died yesterday, after many days in hospital with covid-19. It's a heavy blow. Peter was an inspirational economics teacher and a wonderfully kind man. Peter inspired a generation of great economists and economics journalists, including Dave Ramdsen...
How not to lose your mind in the Covid-19 age
here are as many responses to the Covid-19 pandemic as there are people to respond. Some have of us have children to home-school. Some of us have elderly relatives to worry about; some of us are the elderly relatives in question. Some of us have never been busier;...
Book of the week 11: Uncharted by Margaret Heffernan
“The sagacious businessman is constantly forecasting,” said the great economist Irving Fisher, a man thoroughly convinced of the power of data to make the future legible. Fisher transformed economics and made millions as an entrepreneur, but died in penury. He is now...