Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator

How to lose friends and ghost people

25 March 2023 9:00 am

The fine art of snubbing

Why does everyone hate Max Reger?

18 March 2023 9:00 am

The German composer Max Reger, born 150 years ago next week, is mostly remembered today for countless elephantine fugues and…

The unknown German composer championed by Mahler

18 February 2023 9:00 am

I was sceptical when the lady on the bus to Reading town centre told me that her father knew Liszt.…

Cardinal Pell’s righteous fury at the Vatican’s theological direction

12 January 2023 12:06 am

Cardinal Pell, a former head of Vatican finances, does not criticise Pope Francis directly in the piece he’s written for…

Cardinal Zen’s conviction shows that no one is safe in Hong Kong

25 November 2022 9:39 pm

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the 90-year-old retired bishop of Hong Kong, has been convicted of failing to register a humanitarian…

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