Features
Beyond the pale
Setting off to spend a year teaching English in Zhejiang province in south-eastern China, I expected plenty of surprises. But…
Boxer shorts
Chaps, be honest. Have you achieved nether-region nirvana? Twenty years ago I had reached the summit of underwear style and…
Going nuclear
Wednesday marked the 72nd anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted…
The joy of sex
Your typical Trollope-loving, Brahms-bothering Spectator reader probably won’t be aware that the most recent winner of Big Brother was a…
General rule
Dwight Eisenhower was right to warn Americans in 1961 of the ‘military industrial complex’, but perhaps it is now the…
How I write
How do they do it? Among writers, the earnest audience member at a literary festival who asks, ‘Do you write…
Don’t forget the Yazidis
As the floodwaters subsided, the Ark drifted across northern Iraq. Finally, with a crunching jolt, it hit dry land. Its…
A tale of two Valleys
Silicon Valley looks like a cross between Milton Keynes and the set of the Stepford Wives. Row after row of…
Watercolour
Like many artistically inclined children, I was given a set of Daler Rowney watercolours for my birthday one year. My…
Road to nowhere
When I heard the government’s announcement that petrol and diesel cars are to be banned from 2040, I resorted, as…
You’re fired!
Washington D.C. Even a reality show needs good plot twists, and Donald Trump has delivered them like the master he…
A fighting chance
‘We remember it not only for the rain that fell, the mud that weighed down the living and swallowed the…
Girl power
England won the cricket World Cup for the fourth time. Huzzah! England reached the semi-finals of the European football championship.…
Snapping point
Our family holiday snaps used to be slides. We’d gather in the sitting room while Dad clicked through each one.…
Whither Ukip?
‘Some wine? How about a beer? Shall we settle into a good old pub?’ I make these suggestions to Ukip’s…
The Surrey hills
I live in the oldest village in England. How come? Well, in a field below the big house, there is…
Riot chic
Last weekend, I got into a conversation with the son of an old friend. He’s a nice middle-class boy, mid-twenties,…
Goodwood
The South Downs cover 260 sq miles from Hampshire’s Itchen Valley to Eastbourne in East Sussex. Nestled near the southernmost…
‘I like making things’
Sir James Dyson would make a good therapist for anxious Brexiteers. Everything about him is comfortingly precise — his manner…
Trump’s eastern front
Kiev There is no lavatory paper to be found in government buildings in Kiev. Plan ahead, locals advise, if you…
Persistent buggers
The credit for decriminalising male homosexuality in 1967 — for those over 21 in England and Wales at least —…
Blatant not latent
It’s exactly 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised male homosexuality, received the Royal Assent on 27…
Diana the diva
Twenty years in August since Diana died. The anniversary is sad for me on many levels — she was definitely…
Is Macron’s vanity presidency already falling apart?
The French president’s embarrassing attempts to reinvent himself as the new Tony Blair are not working
Amsterdam Notebook
When my husband and I arrived in our adored Amsterdam on a sun-drenched schoolday afternoon — less than an hour…
