Columnists
Why schools should stay shut
Has the stock of any politician fallen more sharply, these past three or four years, than that of Shami Chakrabarti?…
This is Royal Mail’s chance to appoint a boss fit for the new age
The Royal Mail worker who rang my bell to deliver an Amazon package on Friday was wearing a glittery ball…
Are you a lockdown eel or a pygmy goat?
I identify strongly with the garden eels in the Tokyo aquarium. Pre-corona, they were perfectly sociable. Come opening hour, when…
The Spectator’s Notes
Last month, writing elsewhere, I quoted the website of the China Centre at Jesus College, Cambridge: ‘Under the leadership of…
The dream is over
It started when, the day after the announcement of some lockdown easing, I drove five miles along the coast road.…
Boycotting China is not that easy
China’s various human rights abuses, their treatment of women, their savagery toward religious people and their chokehold on Taiwan and…
The birth of a new telecoms giant heralds the end of Branson’s empire
This month’s most significant corporate deal attracted less attention than it might have done in normal times, crowded out by…
The Spectator’s Notes
A friend, a senior retired mandarin, emails. He complains that rural lockdown means that he and his wife have ‘got…
Who can still make a Sunday joint last a week?
Sunday lunch was always roast beef and, in the traditional way, the Yorkshire pudding was served first with gravy, supposedly…
This is not a natural disaster
Should our future permit an occupation so frivolous, historians years from now will make a big mistake if they blame…
In defence of the lockdown
I realised things were getting back to normal when I threw away a third of a tin of chopped tomatoes…
The British state needs rewiring
‘Covid-19 has been perhaps the biggest test of governments worldwide since the 1940s,’ declares the government’s command paper on the…
You’re not special – just ask Google
My research assistant, John Steele, is also a songwriter. A friend emailed him with the lyrics of a Fleetwood Mac…
For now, age isn’t just a number
When I told my seven-year-old granddaughter, over Zoom, how much I missed being with her, I added: ‘Maybe it won’t…
It’s not us, China – it’s you
Like nearly everything named a ‘scandal’, ‘affair’ or given the post-fix ‘gate’, almost nobody now remembers the Dalai Lama affair.…
Don’t throw money at airlines now: wait for creative destruction ahead
British Airways warns of 12,000 redundancies. Ryanair announces 3,000 job losses as ‘a minimum to survive the next 12 months’;…
The politics of bookshelves
I pulled a Canadian girl in a nightclub, back when I was in my very early twenties. She seemed very…
The Spectator’s notes
Mathias Döpfner is that still rare thing — an outspoken German. I have known him slightly for many years and…
Lullabies and lockdown
I laughed when my Spanish midwife mentioned in passing that in Latin American countries they have a custom for new…
The coronavirus catalyst
‘The normal grease of politics is not there,’ bemoans one sociable cabinet minister. Certainly, the whispered conversations in corridors that…
The Spectator’s Notes
During the second world war, the collection of the National Gallery had to be hidden in a mountain in Wales…
This crisis will be decided by politics, not science
One of the strangest developments to have occurred during this very strange time is that the Prime Minister’s special adviser,…
Sunak was right to tie the banks into his rescue loan scheme
Was the Chancellor wrong to guarantee only 80 per cent, rather than 100, of ‘coronavirus business interruption loans’ to keep…
With an order of cloth the plague arrived
Locked contentedly into the rhythms of farming life and digging for lead on its Derbyshire Peak District slopes, the village…
If this is a war, let’s fight it like one
Under the cloud of conformity that has settled over the land as a replacement for air pollution, heretics who doubt…
