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A democracy ruled by dynasts
The Philippines is the odd man out in Asia, a predominantly Catholic country colonised first by Spain, then the United…
A prickly customer
In October 1897, the grandees of the Royal Horticultural Society gathered to bestow their highest award, the Victoria Medal of…
The right not to bear arms
As I’ve occasionally come to think is the case with The Spectator, this book is perhaps best begun at the…
A visit from Neanderthals
This is the kind of novel that will be discussed jubilantly in the book clubs of places like Lib Dem…
The man in the white suit
Mark Twain conquered almost every challenge that came his way except old age. Living well into his seventies, he was…
Enough to make anyone weep
When it comes to education, I’m in two minds, maybe three. I was sent to private schools, including, for my…
Heights of absurdity
The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has rendered what might otherwise have seemed a fairly niche study of a…
Waves of feeling
Imagine that all the frequencies nature affords were laid out on an extended piano keyboard. Never mind that some waves…
Life in the Afterworld
Angus Mooney is dead. Freshly murdered, he’s appalled to find himself in an Afterworld, having always rejected the possibility of…
One day in Dublin
Emilie Pine writes about the big things and the little things: friendship, love, fertility, grief; waking, showering, catching the bus.…
Surreal love triangle
One could compile a fat anthology of tributes to Marcel Duchamp’s charm – especially what one friend called the artist’s…
Boy wonder
During his brief stage career Master Betty, or the Young Roscius, was no stranger to superlatives: genius, unparalleled, superior, Albion’s…
The money behind the Third Reich
It was a clear cold morning in January 1936 when Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler arrived at the luxurious Regina Palast Hotel…
Thereby hangs a tale
The case of the retired major Herbert Rowse Armstrong, a Hay-on-Wye solicitor hanged in 1922 for killing his wife Katharine…
Be a self-sacrificing ant
One day the writer and artist James Bridle rented a hatchback, taped a smartphone to the steering wheel and installed…
Accentuate the negative
For many years, Michel Houellebecq was patronised by the French literary establishment as an upstart, what with his background in…
Memory test
On page 231 of The Candy House, a sequel – no, a ‘sibling’ says Jennifer Egan – to the Pulitzer…
The great divide
Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar-winning recent film Belfast chronicles the travails of a Protestant family amid sectarian conflict in 1969. Louise Kennedy’s…
That way madness lies
There is a trend for books in which academics write personally about their engagement with literature. Examples include Lara Feigel’s…
A catalogue of invented tongues
The comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, in his stage persona as the dim-witted interviewer Ali G, once asked Noam Chomsky if…
The crop of gold
Publishers love books with ambitious subtitles such as ‘How Bubblegum Made the Modern World’, and this one’s, about American wheat…
Strong opinionsloosely held
In his 2005 book What The Dormouse Said John Markoff traced the roots of the personal computer industry to the…
A Frankenstein device
For as long as we have been human we have looked for some way of telling when we are being…
A true European
Virginia Woolf admitted to her journal: ‘I haven’t that reality gift.’ Her contemporary Arnold Bennett had it in spades. He…
Damned either way
Tibor Fischer 23 April 2022 9:00 am
The War on the West is Douglas Murray’s latest blast against loony left wokery, chiefly in the areas of race…