Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator

King Charles III’s love of classical music

12 November 2022 9:00 am

Damian Thompson on King Charles III’s love of classical music

Vatican II has always been seriously misunderstood

5 November 2022 9:00 am

People no longer moan about most of the things that bothered them during my childhood. You don’t hear old folk…

Papal bull: the shame of the Vatican’s dealings with China

29 October 2022 9:00 am

The shame of the Vatican’s ‘respectful dialogue’ with the CCP

Why Queen Elizabeth was a Presbyterian when she died

18 September 2022 6:00 pm

When the Queen died, she was actually a Presbyterian. That’s because she was in residence at Balmoral, and all British…

BBC radio has excelled itself over the past week

17 September 2022 9:00 am

Listening to BBC Radios 3 and 4 over the past week has been like meeting an old friend who, after…

Why the Tories should gamble on Kemi Badenoch

9 July 2022 10:54 pm

There’s only one candidate for prime minister with the guts to dismantle the self-loathing culture of identity politics that is…

An intimate, lucid and unforgettable new James MacMillan work

9 July 2022 9:00 am

On Tuesday night I was at the world première of a motet by Sir James MacMillan and I don’t think…

Pope Francis has betrayed Cardinal Zen

14 May 2022 4:30 pm

When Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 90-year-old former Bishop of Hong Kong, was arrested by Chinese authorities on Wednesday and charged…

Male friendship is in crisis

9 April 2022 9:00 am

The decline of male friendship

Kirill, the Patriarch in league with Putin

26 March 2022 9:00 am

The Patriarch in league with Putin

The truth behind the Pope Benedict inquiry

27 January 2022 1:00 am

How are we to interpret the revelation that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI misled a sex abuse inquiry? That might seem an…

Djokovic is a conspiracy super spreader

13 January 2022 2:30 am

When the world’s number one tennis player Novak Djokovic found himself locked in a Melbourne hotel because he’d entered Australia…

The selfie is dead – but self-obsession is universal

13 November 2021 9:00 am

Narcissism already has a new obsession

Is the Pope a Protestant?

17 October 2021 9:33 am

When Pope Francis was asked last month how he was doing after surgery on his colon in July, he replied:…

Ex Anglican Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali converts to Catholicism

14 October 2021 7:12 pm

Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester and one of the best-known Anglican clerics, could be ordained as a Catholic…

The best recordings of the Goldberg Variations

2 October 2021 9:00 am

I sometimes think the classical record industry would collapse if it weren’t for the Goldberg Variations. Every month brings more…

Technology is robbing us of the power to forget

4 September 2021 9:00 am

Technology is robbing us of the power to forget

Why am I so angry?

31 July 2021 9:00 am

Why have we become so quick to anger?

Playing with fire — did QAnon start as a cynical game?

24 July 2021 9:00 am

The QAnon conspiracy theory may be absurd, but it can’t be ignored. It has already led to significant acts of violence, says Damian Thompson

The troubling history of Mormonism

3 April 2021 9:00 am

Are Mormons prepared to ignore their troubled history?

Alfred Brendel the Dadaist

16 January 2021 9:00 am

How many people are celebrating the fact that, last week, one of Europe’s most inspired writers about music, modern art…

pope

The Pope really doesn’t like Republicans

1 November 2020 9:16 am

Last week we learned that Pope Francis has torn up the Catholic Church’s teaching that same-sex civil partnerships are gravely…

Why did Balakirev's beautiful, inventive works go out of fashion?

10 October 2020 9:00 am

Anyone who invited the Russian composer Mily Balakirev to dinner had to be jolly careful about the fish they served.…

The sinister Vatican plot against Cardinal Pell

6 October 2020 6:19 pm

Cardinal George Pell isn’t the sort of man to say ‘so there is a God after all!’ – but plenty…

religion

Godforsaken: religion is vanishing from American politics

6 October 2020 12:17 am

The United States has always been the world’s leading religious marketplace. Even before independence, the American colonies were more fervently…