Features
Agitprop for toddlers: the oddly strident politics of CBeebies
The oddly strident politics of CBeebies
Clarissa Tan's Notebook: Why I stopped drinking petrol
Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…
Golf in the Algarve
My second tee shot soared high and straight, then hurtled down towards the lake; a repeat of my first. I…
Benefits Street exposes Britain's dirty secret - how welfare imprisons the poor
A documentary has finally exposed what life is like at the bottom. So why is the left so angry?
The fight for compassionate Conservatism
‘Has the Secretary of State, like me, managed to watch programmes such as Benefits Street and On Benefits & Proud?…
François Hollande - all the president's women
Hollande’s affair demonstrates that the French are becoming more puritanical about monogamy
The Spectator book review that brought down Macmillan's government
Did Macmillan stitch up his succession – or did Iain Macleod’s famous Spectator piece, 50 years old this week, stitch up Macmillan?
What a lost prison manuscript reveals about the real Nelson Mandela
His long-lost prison manuscript sheds new light on the president’s politics, smoothed over in ‘Long Walk to Freedom’
American Night
All in the half-dark, we watch the dead playing the parts of the living, in roles we have seen before:…
Harry Shearer on bringing out Richard Nixon’s feminine side
Simpsons star Harry Shearer on what it takes to play the president
Ten reasons why conservatives should take Edward Snowden seriously
So why are British conservatives determined to ignore his revelations?
Amsterdam
‘What are people in your country saying about Holland these days?’ one Dutch friend recently asked me. I hadn’t the…
American Night
All in the half-dark, we watch the dead playing the parts of the living, in roles we have seen before:…
American Night
All in the half-dark, we watch the dead playing the parts of the living, in roles we have seen before:…
Sorry — but Pope Francis is no liberal
Trendy commentators have fallen in love with a pope of their own invention
Time to Go
Feeling my age, too soon too tired, Whatever gifts I had no more required, I am a hireling called in…
William Astor: My father, his swimming pool and the Profumo scandal
I was ten when the Profumo affair began at my home, Cliveden. Andrew Lloyd Webber has captured some of the story – but not all
Global warming's glorious ship of fools
Eco-warriors stranded in the Antarctic! It’s too good to be true
Don't tax sugar - it doesn't make you fat. Gluttony does
Obesity isn’t a matter of addiction. It’s a question of self-control
'I laughed until I cried, then retched': Boris Johnson on the wit of Simon Hoggart
I really can’t remember exactly how I came to appoint Simon Hoggart the wine correspondent of this magazine, but I…
A girl, a train and a miniature pistol: how I met the Everly Brothers
I had five decades of delight with the Everly Brothers – and it all began on the Flying Scotsman
The Navigators
The 2014 winner of The Spectator’s award for unconventional travel writing
Gardens for all seasons
Winter garden visiting is a solitary pastime, lending itself to the misanthrope, and is highly recommended. When it’s so cold…
Time to Go
Feeling my age, too soon too tired, Whatever gifts I had no more required, I am a hireling called in…
Time to Go
Feeling my age, too soon too tired, Whatever gifts I had no more required, I am a hireling called in…
