Books
Mount Gay Rum
Jonathan Ray visits the oldest rum distillery in the world and gets his hands dirty blending My travels round the…
The Joy of Chocolate
In Grenada, Jonathan Ray attempts to extend his life by eating plenty of dark chocolate. I’m in the House of…
Obituary: Eric Christiansen
Over the past year, we have lost two names cherished by Spectator readers. Rodney Milnes, our opera critic for 20…
Secrets of the universe
A few years ago, in Berne, I visited the apartment where Einstein wrote his theory of special relativity, which changed…
Full steam ahead
To write, and indeed to read, a history of considerable range, both in terms of chronology and of subject matter,…
A fateful squiggle on the map
When turbaned warriors from Daesh (or Isis) advanced on Raqqa in Syria two years ago, they whooped wildly about having…
In life divided
The ten pallbearers at Thomas Hardy’s funeral in Westminster Abbey on 16 January 1928 included Kipling, Barrie, Housman, Gosse, Galsworthy,…
Christmas stocking fillers
The gift books come in all shapes and sizes this year: big, little, tiny, huge, long, short, fat and thin,…
Things fall apart
Ali Smith is that rare thing in Britain: a much-beloved experimental writer. Part of her attraction for readers is that…
A choice of first novels
Constellation by Adrien Bosc (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99) picks nimbly along the divide between fiction and non-fiction. It’s really a speculative…
Up where the air is clear
Robert Twigger’s father was born in a Himalayan hill resort and carried to school in a sedan chair. His son,…
London Notebook
The new government seems to be struggling with the logistical intricacies of removing Britain from the European Union. I can…
Letter from the Caribbean #2
Jonathan Ray gets his head around how to create the perfect rum cocktail. I’ve lost count of the number of…
Letter from the Caribbean #1
Jonathan Ray gets a taste for rum but knows when it’s time to stop. Excitement in the Caribbean concerning Prince…
Obituary: Eric Christiansen
Over the past year, we have lost two names cherished by Spectator readers. Rodney Milnes, our opera critic for 20…
How to solve the engineering skills crisis
UK engineering is facing an insidious threat to its success – a chronic failure to get enough young people to…
Worse than Big Brother
The California novelist T.C. Boyle has often taken true stories and created alternative histories, from John Harvey Kellog and the…
No one turned a hair
The Benson family was one of the most extraordinary of Victorian England, and they certainly made sure that we have…
A very special relationship
You learn startling things about the long entanglement of the British with Spain on every page of Simon Courtauld’s absorbing…
Fine silks and fiery curries
Genial, erudite and companionable over most of its 760 pages, this stout Georgian brick of a neighbourhood history at length…
Weird and wonderful
The Un-Discovered Islands could not be more different in substance — though it is similar in style — to Malachy…
Between pony club and the altar
If you were to take a large dragnet and scoop up all the shoppers in the haberdashery department of Peter…
Figures in a landscape
Timothy Hyman’s remarkable new book makes the case for the relevance of figurative painting in the 20th century, a period…
Soldiers of the Queen
It’s not immediately obvious, but the silhouette on the dust jacket — soldiers advancing in single file, on foot (‘boots…
The milk of human kindness
One of David Cameron’s choices on Desert Island Discs, this book reminds us, was ‘Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the…
