Features
Would you spend £30 on a Charlie Bigham’s ready meal?
Ready meals: the after-work time-saver, the dinner-party cheat – or a poor imitation of proper, cooked food? The proto-ready meal…
The parents gaming special educational needs
As a foster carer and adopter, I’ve spent more mornings than I care to count coaxing my 13-year-old daughter into…
Ukraine must stand as a fortress of European freedom
It is 35 years since I was last in Warsaw and the city is unrecognisable. Back then it was grimy…
Why Sheridan Westlake is the Tories’ best weapon
Who is responsible for Labour’s recent woes? For some Conservatives, the answer is obvious – Sheridan Westlake. He is that…
Here be dragons: the truth about Chinese espionage
On 3 July a Chinese man, Xu Zewei, was arrested in Milan to face extradition on nine charges relating to…
Britain’s glassmaking tradition is fracturing
We live in a strange era in which much of our day-to-day experience is constructed for us digitally on a…
French parents do it better
I arrived in Paris as an au pair in 2022. I was in my early twenties and armed only with…
Labour’s class war on moorland
This year has been a bad one for wildfires in Britain. In June, nearly 30,000 acres burned near Carrbridge in…
Can anyone stop J.D. Vance becoming president?
As Donald J. Trump flew to the Holy Land on Sunday to declare peace, his Vice-President took to the airwaves…
Confessions of a skip-diver
Call me disgusting, but I like rubbish, and I like it best from a skip. I am also in good…
The Spectator state of mind
It is party time in New York as we toast the launch of The Spectator’s swish new office on Fifth…
My toxic affair with my Land Rover
For the past decade I’ve been in a toxic relationship. Sure, there were red flags – most of them on…
My personalised number plate is worth more than my car
A poll has confirmed what most people know already – personalised number plates are vulgar, divisive and a complete waste…
The civil service is killing restorative justice
Failing institutions don’t like challenge, let alone being shown up. Few institutions are failing more tragically than our prisons –…
Did Jonathan Powell torpedo the China espionage trial?
The antics of Keir Starmer and his top security adviser over the collapsed China espionage case bring to mind the…
The Church of England’s muddle over sex and marriage
Whatever you think of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, there can be no doubt about this: she firmly…
The increasing fear felt by Britain’s Jews
If you walked down the Strand in London on Tuesday this week you would have been greeted by hundreds of…
Jilly Cooper was utterly unrivalled
Jilly Cooper, the last great Englishwoman of my lifetime – after Queen Elizabeth II and Debo – has died. The…
Palestinian nationalism has come to Cornwall
This is West Cornwall, land of fishing, jam first and Trotskyite crafters. There is a sizeable community of nutters yearning…
How Germany is preparing for war
Hamburg What would happen if Russia was planning an attack on Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia – and the threat was…
Learning to speak Latin and Ancient Greek can save civilisation
Finally, some good news from Oxford. The university has recently been through a gloomy patch. It slipped from the top…
The luxury of French prisons
Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of the French Republic, has been convicted and sentenced to five years for a ‘criminal conspiracy…
Let them eat swan
How to react to Nigel Farage’s suggestion that immigrants are killing and eating swans? You can react like LBC’s Iain…
Kemi Badenoch: how I plan to save the Tories
Kemi Badenoch is in ebullient form. She promises the Conservative party conference, which begins this weekend in Manchester, will be…
The Tories must free themselves from the cult of Thatcher
Like every Tory Boy, I had a Margaret Thatcher poster. I put it up when I was 15 and had…
