A woke diary
The Covid lockdown has confined me to the house for long periods. My wife is downstairs working on a new…
Frozen
China’s winter Olympics will be a frosty affair
GOAT becomes scapegoat
From zero-Covid to zero-Djokovic
The reckoning has begun
The West’s Covid strategy is crumbling
Cancel ‘Invasion Day’
Stop patronising Aboriginal Australians
Dangerous ideas
An outburst of truth-telling in Israel might be contagious
Playing to the peanut gallery
Chicken Little doctors at the AMA go off-piste
A week in the life of Brandon
President Joe Biden’s presidency is not going well
Business/Robbery, etc.
Be careful what you wish for. Climate activists — including investment managers of other people’s money such as union-dominated superannuation…
Jeremy Irons in House of Gucci
Any attempt to fictionalise the Gucci story runs into the same difficulties as Ridley Scott’s handsome and absorbing film, House…
Aussie Life
I live by the sea and like walking along the coastline including scrambling over the rock ledges in Noosa National…
Aussie Language
A letter writer to the Australian has pointed out that Anthony Albanese appears to have coined a brand-new oxymoron to…
Republic no-one wants
Except Liberal MP Jason Falinski
Portrait of the week
Home Sue Gray, Second Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, having been asked by Boris Johnson to look into accusations…
GHB and GBH
Never, never kill the dog. It’s rule one in the crime writer’s manual. Cats are bad enough, as I can…
What the Georgians did for us
‘The two most fascinating subjects in the universe are sex and the 18th century,’ declared the novelist Brigid Brophy when…
Bridge
Almost everyone has a set of ‘carding’ agreements with their partners to convey information when defending. But I’m always amazed…
Looking on the bright side
When Zorrie Underwood, the titular character in Laird Hunt’s deeply touching novel about an Indiana farm woman, is pregnant, a…
Bring me my Spear
Where do you see paintings by Ruskin Spear (1911–90)? In the salerooms mostly, because his work in public collections is…
Puzzle no. 686
White to play. Gelfand–Karjakin, Tal Memorial Blitz 2008. Gelfand’s pawn is pinned, and moving the king runs into more checks.…
The Spectator’s Notes
In May 2020, in the wake of the Barnard Castle story, Emily Maitlis delivered her famous Newsnight address to the…
Old money
In defence of hard cash
Meat of the matter
Are you ready for ‘Operation Red Meat’? If not, then you should brace yourself. For it looks set to be…
Looking back in anger
What Keir Starmer should have said, but didn’t, was that he had indeed drunk some beer in a frowsy Labour…
The good side of guilt
I do not know anyone in the Sackler family. I wouldn’t even have heard of them were it not for…
