flat white

Mock the media, and win

Why do some people seem to think it’s a good idea to take political advice for our team from those…

17 May 2025

What the hell

Having enjoyed the brief sense of euphoria over Adam Bandt’s defeat in the seat of Melbourne – he managed to…

17 May 2025

I didn’t read the news today, oh boy

Two media commentators on the National Public Radio (NPR) network – America’s closest equivalent to the ABC – recently spent…

17 May 2025

We need Milei’s chainsaw

Australia’s political and economic direction is beginning to travel a well-trodden and dangerous path. A path that increasingly looks Argentinian.…

Viva il Papa? Let’s wait and see

As was the case with the lead-up to the conclaves of 2005 and 2013, the lead-up to the most recent…

17 May 2025

Leo in the ascendant

If a pleasant and cordial personality is a reliable indication, the Roman Catholic Church can look forward to calmer days…

17 May 2025

The Farage earthquake

It may only be of small comfort to Australians mourning the 3 May landslide to Labor, but elections two days…

17 May 2025

The Getting of Green Wisdom

‘If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise,’ wrote William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven…

17 May 2025

Gary Lineker must ‘educate’ himself on the Nazis

When I was a schoolboy, on the rare occasions I was required to line up against the wall to be…

16 May 2025

Britain could pay a big price for Starmer’s ‘EU Reset’

The great ‘EU Reset’ of 19 May – when the first formal UK-EU summit since Brexit will take place –…

16 May 2025

The trouble with BBC Verify

Can the BBC ever be objective and unbiased? It’s a question many of us ask ourselves, sometimes in hope, often…

16 May 2025

Why lesbians want out of the LGBT movement

LGBT+ is an ‘inclusive’ way to represent all the different identities in the longer acronym, says the BBC. What nonsense:…

16 May 2025

Sign up to the Morning Double Shot newsletter

The Spectator Australia's Morning Double Shot delivers a hearty breakfast of news and views straight to your inbox

Sign up to the Unfiltered evening newsletter

Stimulate your evenings with our unfiltered blend of the latest from Australia, the UK and the World.

Jacinda Ardern and the empty politics of ‘kindness’

Just over two years on from stepping down as Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern is awaiting the imminent…

27 Apr 2025

307,000 Voices

Growing concerns at the impact of unregulated free speech around the world, and especially in the English-speaking West, are understandable.…

5 Apr 2025

New Zealand’s cringeworthy new tourism slogan

‘Everyone must go!’ New Zealand’s new tourism declares, but so far almost everyone seems to be cringing. The prime minister…

18 Feb 2025

The sacred sites fandango

The second-highest mountain in New Zealand has been granted ‘personhood’ by the NZ parliament because it is regarded as the…

15 Feb 2025

Sign up to the Flat White newsletter

Weekly round up of the best Flat White blogs - delivered straight to your inbox

Sign up to the Best of the World newsletter

Get the latest developments around the world - delivered straight to your inbox

Aussie life

In 1968 the anthropologist Bill Stanner gave the Boyer Lectures on ABC Radio and coined the phrase ‘the great Australian…

17 May 2025

Language

Joe Hildebrand excitedly told me about a new word he had come across while doing a Times cryptic crossword puzzle…

17 May 2025

How emotions shape our decision-making

Ask any estate agent: most potential house buyers arrive with a detailed list of criteria for their new home, only…

17 May 2025

Dear Mary: how can I relax about the clothes moths in my home?

Q. Having previously lived in the country in a field with my nearest neighbour not even visible, I recently moved…

17 May 2025

The problem with Pascal’s wager

Blaise Pascal resists definition. During a short life (he died in 1662, aged 39) he invented the calculator, laid the…

17 May 2025

Richard Ellmann: the man and his masks

Richard Ellmann’s acclaimed life of James Joyce was published in 1959, with a revised and expanded edition appearing in 1982.…

17 May 2025

Consorting with the enemy: The Propagandist, by Cécile Desprairies, reviewed

As a young child in the mid-1960s, Cécile Desprairies listened hour after hour to her mother Lucie dreamily recalling the…

17 May 2025

Private battles: Twelve Post-War Tales, by Graham Swift, reviewed

When Granta magazine’s list of Best of Young British Novelists first appeared in 1983 it was a cue for me…

17 May 2025

A David Bowie devotee with the air of Adrian Mole

When one thinks of ‘odd’, one might imagine the bizarre but not the boring. Yet odd thingscan indeed be boring…

17 May 2025

From the early 1930s we knew what Hitler’s intentions were – so why were we so ill-prepared?

MI6’s historical archive suffered disastrous weeding on grounds of space from the 1920s onwards. One of many mysteries was the…

17 May 2025

Driven to extremes: The Rest of Our Lives, by Ben Markovits, reviewed

In a break from his tetralogy about the Essinger family, and following on from The Sidekick (a kind of Humboldt’s…

17 May 2025

The mixed messages of today’s architecture – retro utopias or dizzy towers?

Only when history is decarbonised and decolonised will we understand how architecture should advance. For the time being, the art…

17 May 2025