Books
Hugo Williams's new poems confirm his national-treasure status
Around 1960, I went to work with the literary staff of The Spectator, where I was followed, in a later…
‘Like Superman stopping a runaway train’: when Bobby Moore tackled Jairzinho
Nothing illustrates the transformation in the working lives of professional footballers since the end of the maximum wage better than…
Going for a Song, by Bevis Hillier - extract
An Anthology of Poems about Antiques, compiled and introduced by Bevis Hillier
Literature's least attractive power couple
This book charts the rise and fall of one of the strangest power couples of modern times. The senior partner…
Hugh Trevor-Roper: the spy as historian, the historian as spy
Shortly after the war began in September 1939, the branch of the intelligence services called MI8, or the Radio Security…
If you hate art-world show-offs, Grayson Perry, what's with the frocks?
At the time it was all too easy to get sucked in by the hype. In 2013, Grayson Perry was…
Beer and skittles and Lucian Freud and Quentin Crisp – a Hampstead misery memoir
The rise of the ‘misery memoir’ describing abusive childhoods, followed by the I-was-a-teenage-druggie-alkie-gangbanger-tick-as-appropriate memoir, pushed into the shadows an older…
And one more for the road – excerpts from Roddy Doyle’s latest
From Two More Pints by Roddy Doyle (Cape, £7.99, pp. 114, ISBN 9780224101899).
Cecil Beaton, the bitch
Beaton was the great inventor. Apart from inventing not only himself but his look, his voice, his persona and a…
Andrew Marr thinks he’s a novelist. I don’t
It’s September 2017, and our still apparently United Kingdom is in the throes of a referendum campaign. The wise, charming,…
David Hockney, our most popular and hardworking living artist, returns to the easel
The first volume of Christopher Simon Sykes’s biography of David Hockney ended in the summer of 1975. The 38-year-old painter…
Mynheer Wouwermans
From the long ride, fresh trees licked by enough blue light to cross-patch antique trousers, we come at last past…
Keep the Man Booker Prize British
Americans don’t need the cachet of our most prestigious literary prize – but we do, says Matthew Walther
Books and arts
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And one more for the road
9-12-12— See the spacer died. —Wha’ spacer? —The Sky at Night fella. —Bobby Moore. —Patrick Moore. —That’s him, yeah. Did…
Homage to Simenon
One hundred years ago an 11-year-old boy called Georges Simenon was getting accustomed to the presence of the German army…
Mynheer Wouwermans
From the long ride, fresh trees licked by enough blue light to cross-patch antique trousers, we come at last past…
Title Stories: ‘The Waste Land’ by T.S.Eliot
The post Title Stories: ‘The Waste Land’ by T.S.Eliot appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the…
And one more for the road
9-12-12— See the spacer died. —Wha’ spacer? —The Sky at Night fella. —Bobby Moore. —Patrick Moore. —That’s him, yeah. Did…
Homage to Simenon
One hundred years ago an 11-year-old boy called Georges Simenon was getting accustomed to the presence of the German army…
Mynheer Wouwermans
From the long ride, fresh trees licked by enough blue light to cross-patch antique trousers, we come at last past…
Title Stories: ‘The Waste Land’ by T.S.Eliot
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Corrie and ready-salted crisps: the years when modern Britain began
The only thing really swinging in early Sixties Britain, says Sam Leith, was the wrecking-ball
A Troubles novel with plenty of violence and, thank heaven, some sex too
‘The Anglo-Irish, their tribe, are dying. . . . They will go without a struggle, unlamented,’ Christopher Bland, 76, declares…
Bees make magic: an inspirational case for biodiversity
The importance of biodiversity, a handy concept that embraces diversity of eco-systems, species, genes and molecules, has been promoted for…
