Features
The tragic decline of children’s literature
The other day, leafing through T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which enchanted me as a child, I was…
Giorgia Meloni’s Italian renaissance
Rome Last weekend, Rome hosted nearly a million young pilgrims to celebrate the Papal Jubilee of Youth. Part Woodstock festival,…
The Catholic influencers spreading the word of God
Vatican City In an auditorium just outside St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sat solemnly…
Varun Chandra: the most important adviser you’ve never heard of
The porousness of the Establishment, and its reluctance to advertise its activities, are illustrated by the career of Varun Chandra.…
The power of wax seals has never waned
In our electronic age it hardly comes as a surprise that Pat MacFadden’s Cabinet Office intends to do away with…
Ctrl U: the Online Safety Act is shutting down the internet
This time last year, the UK was consumed by the worst race riots since 2001. It was precipitated by the…
The asylum hotel crisis will cost Labour
Yvette Cooper doesn’t do holidays, which is probably just as well since she is the minister who, this summer, holds…
Teddy bears and TikTokers: on the Epping front line
Early on Sunday afternoon at the Epping Bean Café, where a cutesy sign hangs from a wall reading ‘Coffee makes…
Lunch with Thomas Straker, the chef the restaurant world loves to hate
‘It was a heavy week,’ sighs Thomas Straker, explaining why he recently ended up on a drip in New York.…
Why Generation Woke loves romantasy
When the willowy human Feyre meets the faerie Tamlin in A Court of Thorns and Roses (known as ACOTAR by…
Give Eric Ravilious a rest
How do artists sustain a reputation? We’d like to think it’s on the basis of their work. In the case…
Trump’s tariffs are taming China
Stockholm This week, the fate of the global economy could have been decided over a Mongolian barbecue in a Stockholm…
Is this the man who can defeat France’s Islamists?
When France played Algeria in their national stadium, the Stade de France, in 2001, the French player Thierry Henry said…
Hotel Oloffson is ruined – and so is Haiti
Earlier this month, in Haiti’s tatterdemalion capital of Port-au-Prince, armed gangs burned down the Hotel Oloffson. As news of the…
The secrets of the Palm House at Kew
The news that the Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will begin a £60 million, five-year renovation in…
Monaco, the people-watching paradise
I’m lying on a sun lounger in Monte Carlo and there are so many women with extended blonde hair, hornet-stung…
How private equity ruined Britain
What has happened to Britain’s rivers isn’t a mistake. The fact that serious pollution is up 60 per cent on…
Can anything stop Reform?
A close associate of Nigel Farage received phone calls from three civil servants in the past week, asking how they…
The Donald and the art of golf diplomacy
In 1969, one of the great acts of sportsmanship occurred at Royal Birkdale golf club in Southport, when the Ryder…
Base instincts: unease on the garrisons housing Afghan refugees
Helping Afghan refugees escape Taliban retribution has not proved easy; ensuring their integration into their host countries more challenging still.…
Could Japan soon be governed by chatbots?
Tokyo Could Japan be the world’s first -algocracy – government by algorithm? The concept has been flirted with elsewhere: in…
Britain fought on the wrong side of the first world war
It’s more than two months since I returned from Dublin, and at last the hangover is beginning to fade. I…
How I got under Macron’s skin
The journalist Jonathan Miller, a cherished Spectator contributor, died last week at his home in Occitanie, France. Below is an…
The left-wing case for controlled immigration
Controlled immigration was once a left-wing cause. It was a basic tenet of trade unionism – not to mention economics…
Broke Britain: how the Bank of England wrecked the economy
In February 2020, a few weeks before Britain was thrown into lockdown, Sajid Javid resigned as chancellor of the exchequer…
