Books
Who’s blinded by class and imperial prejudices?
Tariq Ali, the Marxist writer and activist, believes that a ‘Churchill cult’ is ‘drowning all serious debate’ about the wartime…
All talk and no trousers
Attacks on British elitism usually talk about Oxbridge, but Simon Kuper argues that it is specifically Oxford that is the…
A dangerous balancing act
Thomas Cromwell’s biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch once told me that my father’s family, the Dormers, had been servants of the great…
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…
A true bohemian
Jean Rhys lived a vagabond life – but she wrote about gloom and squalor with luminous purity and a poet’s care, says Lucasta Miller
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…
Presumption of guilt
The Pell case is a contemporary Australian version of the infamous Dreyfus case in 19th century France and may even…
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…
More fevered speculation
Royal gossip is largely invented, says Philip Hensher – but Tina Brown repeats it regardless
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…
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…