Knickerbocker glory
I grew up by the seaside. More precisely, I grew up near South Shields, on the north-east coast – somewhere…
Solution to 2560: Obit VI
The perimetric names are NIJINSKY, NEVER SAY DIE, CREPELLO, THE MINSTREL, ROBERTO and TEENOSO, six of the nine Derby winners…
Escape from drudgery
Shunned by his father and his peers because of his homosexuality, Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule in 1992) left his village…
The dying of the light
Cornelia Parker wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but when she was growing up her German godparents…
Prosaic
In Competition No. 3256, you were invited to take a well-known poem and recast it as a short story. Ben…
Knives out
Daisy Dunn on the art of surgery
Sons of a preacher man
A few years ago, I spoke to Mick Jagger and asked him which of the (relatively) new crop of rock…
One man and his robot
Brian and Charles is a sweetly funny mockumentary about a lonely Welsh inventor who is not that good at inventing.…
Location, location, location
Roy Williams’s new play is a wonky beast. It has two dense and cumbersome storylines that aren’t properly developed. Dawn…
The thrilling game
‘The Terminal List is… a dated and drably made eight-part military thriller that offers little intrigue or excitement,’ says the…
2563: Areas for development
11 Across (two words) suggests the other unclued lights, which are all one-word anagrams of words of a kind (one…
The Spectator’s Notes
Few leaders could be as different in character as Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson, but one can compare their predicaments…
Desire paths
Pause in a park or field in summer and look out across the grass and you’ll see a multitude of…
Nepo’s playbook
Ian Nepomniachtchi is back for more. The former world championship challenger left his rivals in the dust at the Candidates…
The Battle for Britain
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Slippery slope
Runaway inflation is proving costly for Turkey’s oil wrestlers
‘How can we be certain amachine isn’t conscious?’
Philosopher Nick Bostrom on the AI threat
Road to hell
The blight of the 20mph speed limit
The turf
Heading for a holiday in Sardinia, I remembered that the last time we were there our engine-less, drifting boat was…
The truth about life as a gay Tory MP
Male Tory MPs molesting young men? Buttock-squeezing and groin-fumbling at a private members’ club? A middle-aged politician slipping into a…
Low life
All afternoon I had been horizontal next to an electric fan, sometimes sleeping, sometimes awake and sometimes halfway between those…
Barometer
Blooming huge Botanists discovered the largest species of giant water lily at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, with leaves more…
Real life
The British Gas engineers arrived in convoy, and the dust from their tyres flew into the air as they came…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. This year once again my company took a small group of clients to lunch at Royal Ascot. Our guests…
High life
Looking back and trying to choose just one out of those incomparably bewitching women of one’s youth can be tricky.…
