Don’t write off literary fiction yet
I don’t intend to start a feud. Most of Sean Thomas’s essay on The Spectator’s website last week, titled ‘Good…
I’m a culture war addict
Reading Melissa Lawford’s excellent analysis in the Sunday Telegraph, ‘Putin can’t afford peace – Russia’s economy is hooked on war’,…
It’s time to scrap the asylum system
Whatever you think of the blizzard of executive orders howling from the White House, at least the new President doesn’t…
How I took on Microsoft’s AI – and won
‘This is an assault!’ I screamed in my study, oblivious to the fact that my husband had a guest downstairs.…
Immigration’s theatre of the absurd
On the cusp of an almighty row over Trump’s planned mass deportations, let’s look to Europe for light relief. Last…
The case against a ‘climate emergency’
January is the ideal month for gaining a sense of perspective. I’m increasingly convinced that the ‘climate emergency’ is another…
Why didn’t I read the comments sooner?
I adhere to a pretty iron-clad rule: not only do I avoid the bumper cars of social media, but I…
The column you don’t want to read
Curiously unobserved about last month’s US election: how astonishing it was that the candidates’ policy positions during the pandemic played…
The true meaning of free speech
Right after Donald Trump’s landslide, I opined on YouTube that this turning point could sound the death knell for Woke…
The real test for the republic
It’s always intimidating to write for a readership more clued up than you are. I file this on the very…
America’s last undecided voter
This is the last column I’ll file before the American presidential election, and I’ve dreaded writing it for months. (The…
My friend the pariah
Spectator TV viewers may recall that in last week’s Americano podcast, Freddy Gray interviewed the University of Pennsylvania law professor…
Whatever happened to Lionel Shriver?
For many readers, my absence from these pages may have gone unnoticed. Those few who’ve detected my disappearance might have…
Will the real Kamala Harris please stand up?
About five minutes ago, the one Democrat more certain to lose to Donald Trump than Joe Biden was his widely…
The cognitive dissonance of the Democrats
Believe it or not, I planned to write the gist of this column before Saturday night. However, a caveat. Unlike…
Biden is as big a narcissist as Trump
The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the…
Tory voters want to punish their party – and themselves
For progressive onlookers abroad, the Labour landslide now projected next month will seem a cheerful counterweight to the EU parliamentary…
Another election boost for Trump
Last Thursday evening a companionable London dinner party was just wrapping up when our hostess returned to the table brandishing…
What will Europe look like in the future?
This year, several articles in mainstream papers have sounded the alarm that the global human fertility rate will soon cross…
I hate hate speech laws
I originally intended to observe that American universities’ anti-Israel protestors and Hamas terrorists deserve each other, because they’ve so much…
It rarely pays to be ahead of your time
Following the release of the Cass report deprecating NHS ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors as reliant on rubbish medical research, the…
Is Trump or Biden a bigger threat to democracy?
When more than two-thirds of the American electorate doesn’t want to vote for either major party’s nominee, a third party…
Beware pathological niceness
When so many polls suggest that restricting mass immigration would be to politicians’ electoral advantage, voters in the West are…
