flat white

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…

24 Dec 2020

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,…

23 Dec 2020

Celebrate Christmas

Only two sleeps till Christmas and I just cannot wait.  I love Christmas. My fifth music album was all Christmas…

23 Dec 2020

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…

22 Dec 2020

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…

22 Dec 2020

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,…

22 Dec 2020

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…

22 Dec 2020

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.  …

21 Dec 2020

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…

24 Dec 2020

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…

24 Dec 2020

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…

23 Dec 2020

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…

23 Dec 2020

Star power

The last time Jupiter and Saturn aligned this closely, Genghis Khan was implementing his Great Reset across much of Eurasia.…

19 Dec 2020

Sorry states of play

For most Australians, I suspect, one of the big discoveries of 2020 would have been the extent to which our…

19 Dec 2020

History written in stone

Rare permanent springs in the barren arid outback were sites of gushing spa waters in former tropical times. These springs…

19 Dec 2020

Balmain calling

Earlier this year, I was in London in the (very) early stages of pre-production of a brilliant script by David…

19 Dec 2020

Van & the pandemic

Last year I spent a long and convivial morning in Belfast in the company of Van Morrison. True, Morrison was…

19 Dec 2020

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…

19 Dec 2020

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…

19 Dec 2020

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…

12 Dec 2020

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Orson Welles

It seems on the face of it the oddest proposition on earth. David Fincher, the famous Hollywood director of Fight…

19 Dec 2020

The Australian Ballet

It is indeed a new era. The Australian Ballet announced its 2021 season under the new artistic direction of David…

19 Dec 2020

Ned Kelly

All the young millennials I know were raging in Melbourne the other Saturday night and so were some of their…

12 Dec 2020

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Time to look to the future; performing arts companies are encouraging us to do so through their subscription seasons now…

12 Dec 2020

Language notes

Word-of-the-year of the Year It’s that time of year once again – the season when dictionaries announce their choice for…

19 Dec 2020

It’s been a tough year for socialites

New York Here we go again, the annual holiest of holies is upon us, although to this oldie last Christmas…

19 Dec 2020

Dear Mary, from Joanna Lumley: what should I do with my excess Christmas cards?

From Joanna Lumley Q. We receive a huge number of Christmas cards every year. When I take them all down…

19 Dec 2020

Is it time to reopen technology’s cold cases?

One of the staples of crime drama is the ‘cold-case squad’. This allows programme-makers to add period detail to the…

19 Dec 2020

George Pell: Behind Bars

This is the prison diary that should never have been written because Cardinal George Pell should never have been in…

19 Dec 2020

Summer books

A decade from now, we might look back at 2020 and laugh. Then again, maybe not. It has been a…

19 Dec 2020

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…

19 Dec 2020

Spot the literary character

For answers, visit spectator.com.au/2020/12/answers-to-spot-the-literary-character.

19 Dec 2020

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…

19 Dec 2020

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…

19 Dec 2020

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…

19 Dec 2020

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…

19 Dec 2020