Death of a dissident: Saudi Arabia and the rise of the mobster state
As someone who spent three decades working closely with intelligence services in the Arab world and the West, the Saudi…
The job of universities
Amelia is an academic at an Australian university. She reached out to me earlier this year after seeing my work…
Encouraging assimilation
The bedrock of a successful society is formed by common language, common values, and common goals. When societies lose sight…
Change everything? You bet
Naomi Klein from Canada oversees courses for tens of thousands of Australian high school students. She’s an anarcho-environmentalist mobilising grass-roots…
The Left vs Reasonable Doubt
At the risk of propelling readers to throw down this wonderful magazine in despair and shift to watching the latest…
Sharma shafts Shorten
Australia will soon face what is arguably one of the most important elections in its history, with Wentworth a crucial…
Fish or bear’s paw?
Last century, when Mao ruled China, shop assistants repeated daily, ‘We don’t have any more’ (Meiyou). I heard the phrase…
Reds on the red carpet
For the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who watched Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969, there are…
Castration of the male?
Expect the US Supreme Court, still captured by political activists, to downgrade men’s rights within the decade, with honorary ‘feminist’…
Stuart Devlin candelabras (1980-81) in Dining Room
Every day, Australians carry some of his work in their pockets. Stuart Devlin (1931-2018) designed the decimal currency introduced in…
Artists of The Australian Ballet
There is a lot of dance news about at the moment. The Australian Ballet’s new version of Spartacus, to the…
Some Brandenburg section leaders
‘Celebrating 30 Years of Baroque’ is Paul Dyer’s theme of the 2019 Season of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra; 30 years…
Kate Morton
She was born in a small town in South Australia, later grew up on Tamborine Mountain and, when aged barely…
Lonely hearts and guilty minds: the world of Pamela Hansford Johnson
The revival of interest in mid-20th century novelists is one of the most positive and valuable developments of our time.…
The circus visits every corner of the globe — even Antarctica
We’re celebrating 250 years of circus this year. In 1768, the retired cavalryman and entrepreneur Philip Astley, together with his…
Pithy and profound: the beauty of aphorisms
It’s not surprising, perhaps, that Emil Cioran isn’t much read in England. Born in Romania, but winning a scholarship to…
Secrets and lies: Berta Isla, by Javier Marías, reviewed
A novel by Javier Marías, as his millions of readers know, is never what it purports to be. Spain’s most…
Gandhi on Hitler: ‘I do not believe him to be as bad as he is portrayed’
‘It’s a beautiful world if it wasn’t for Gandhi who is really a perfect nuisance,’ Lord Willingdon, Viceroy of India,…
The passions of Paulo: Enigma Variations, by André Aciman, reviewed
André Aciman’s 2007 debut novel, Call Me By Your Name, was a sensuous, captivating account of the passionate love a…
Stitches in time: The history of the world through the eye of a needle
I recently read a book in which the author, describing rural life in the early 19th century, casually mentioned clothing…
How indiscretions over Suez ruined Rab Butler
I bet that you are at best dimly aware of the Progress Trust, and that is what the members of…
![Giving the famous V-sign at the opening of RAAF headquarters, Croydon, 1948 [Getty]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/10/churchill.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=730&h=486)
Andrew Roberts’s generous new biography of the man who saved us in our darkest hour, Churchill reviewed
Churchill must be the most written-about figure in public life since Napoleon Bonaparte (a subject, incidentally, to which Andrew Roberts…
Love is blind, but lust is not; William Boyd’s 15th novel reviewed
William Boyd’s 15th novel begins well enough. In 1894 Edinburgh, a 24-year-old piano tuner is promoted to the Paris branch…
Behind the Throne is a cracking read about a neglected subject – the royal household
Never judge a book by its cover. To look at, this is a coffee-table book with shiny pages which make…
It is not the masterpieces that were lost, but the collectors, Natalya Semenova rights a wrong
It is not as surprising at it sounds that two of the greatest collectors of modern art should have been…