Sorry states of play
Happy Xmas (woke is over)
To mark the end of the year that saw elected politicians of all political stripes impose what retired British top…
Palestinian kids in UN-run schools are being taught to hate and kill
Schools being operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency are teaching Palestinian children as young as 6 to hate,…
Celebrate Christmas
Only two sleeps till Christmas and I just cannot wait. I love Christmas. My fifth music album was all Christmas…
Merry Christmas corona chaos from the Premiers
State Premiers have rushed to support New South Wales in a show of national unity as authorities battle to control…
Why do politicians pretend they can wipe out the Wuhan virus?
Why do politicians so l often make decisions based not on judgement but on computer modelling? This is notwithstanding the telling…
The Coate Report: This must never happen again. Really?
The Spectator Australia is first with the news. We have proved this time and again. Just yesterday, if proof were needed,…
Roll up, roll up for the 2020 Nanny State Awards – bigger and brassier than ever
It’s never been difficult to find worthy contenders for the highly coveted Nanny State awards. But this year took nanny-stating…
Daniel Andrews: diminished, damned and disgraced
And so the 543-page final Report of the Coate Inquiry into Victoria’s deadly Covid-19 hotel quarantining has been tabled. …
Is there a Brexit deal?
Tonight we are still waiting for confirmation that a Brexit deal has been done. But the noises coming out of…
Who would want to be Joe Biden’s attorney general?
Whoever Joe Biden picks for attorney general is in a lose-lose situation. Why is that job so hard? At least…
The BBC should be ashamed of its reporting on trans teenagers
This is an article about some difficult, complex subjects: suicide, mental health, support for transgender children. It’s also about something…
Could 30 per cent of Brits have some Covid immunity?
How big is the job of vaccination? The aim is herd immunity, to protect enough people so that the virus…
Star power
The last time Jupiter and Saturn aligned this closely, Genghis Khan was implementing his Great Reset across much of Eurasia.…
Sorry states of play
For most Australians, I suspect, one of the big discoveries of 2020 would have been the extent to which our…
History written in stone
Rare permanent springs in the barren arid outback were sites of gushing spa waters in former tropical times. These springs…
Balmain calling
Earlier this year, I was in London in the (very) early stages of pre-production of a brilliant script by David…
Van & the pandemic
Last year I spent a long and convivial morning in Belfast in the company of Van Morrison. True, Morrison was…
Ludwig van & the pandemic
The past year was marked by pandemic-induced losses. Apart from illness, death and economic devastation, we sustained a serious cultural…
Cherry-picking the hockey stick
Whatever else the hysteria over Wuhan flu did to the world, it obliterated the alarmist global warming fearmongering for a…
Fighting back with conservative appointments
Why is it that left-wing political parties are so good at ruthlessly appointing like-minded fellow travellers to all the key…
Orson Welles
It seems on the face of it the oddest proposition on earth. David Fincher, the famous Hollywood director of Fight…
The Australian Ballet
It is indeed a new era. The Australian Ballet announced its 2021 season under the new artistic direction of David…
Ned Kelly
All the young millennials I know were raging in Melbourne the other Saturday night and so were some of their…
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Time to look to the future; performing arts companies are encouraging us to do so through their subscription seasons now…
George Pell: Behind Bars
This is the prison diary that should never have been written because Cardinal George Pell should never have been in…
Summer books
A decade from now, we might look back at 2020 and laugh. Then again, maybe not. It has been a…
A conciliatory P.J. O’Rourke is not the satirist we know and love
There was an acidic bravura and beauty in P.J. O’Rourke’s early journalism and a gleefulness in the ease with which…
Spot the literary character
For answers, visit spectator.com.au/2020/12/answers-to-spot-the-literary-character.
Will we soon see the end of conservatism as we know it?
For some years I chaired the international alliance of centre right and conservative parties, the International Democrat Union. It is…
The only man who didn’t want to be Cary Grant was Cary Grant himself
Cary Grant was a hoax so sublime his creator struggled to escape him. He was a metaphor, too, for the…
The End of Times and the coming of the Antichrist
Two things it may be wise to know before picking up this relatively short and surprisingly cheerful brand spanking NEW…
Mozart the infant prodigy was also a child of the Enlightenment
‘My dear young man: don’t take it too hard,’ Joseph II counsels a puppyish Mozart, the colour of his hair…