Life
Spectator Competition: Trivial pursuits
For Competition 3418 you were invited to provide a pompous leading article on a trivial subject. The ubiquity of ‘Hi’…
Where was everyone at Newbury?
The West Wing scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin had it about right when he said that so long as you keep one…
The curse of room three
The singer sped past me out of the gate, sending me flying as I tried to say goodbye. We’ve been…
I took on a hornet – and won
Provence Midnight. In preparation for a 5 a.m. rise I’d been asleep for two sweltering hours under the ceiling fan…
Aussie life
The precise location of Victoria’s most dangerous fugitive was finally revealed last week after international news networks aired footage of…
Politics
Conservative politics in Australia looks to be in the worst shape it has ever been in. How many policies does…
The customer isn’t always far-right
One of Dominic Cummings’s many insights in the run-up to the Brexit referendum was that ‘most people were both more…
Was I the victim of a sex crime?
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I went up to her and got straight to the point: ‘What are you using for bait?’…
You can’t cancel the cancelled
When Theresa May appointed me as a non-executive director of the Office for Students, the Downing Street press office decided…
The glory of the Goring
Last weekend, I was in England: among two very diverse aspects of the nation. In recent months, every Saturday, central…
The secrets of a British apple pie
‘As American as apple pie’, or so the saying goes. But what happens if the apple pie in question isn’t…
Spectator Competition: Forget me not
Comp. 3417 invited you to write an elegy to a piece of obsolete technology. This prompted a deluge of very…
A visit from the left-whingers
The Americans wanted an argument and they weren’t going to take no, or indeed yes, for an answer. They arrived…
Dear Mary: Help! My neighbour knows I lied about her daughter’s wedding photos
Q. I have been booked to give my first talk on my field of professional interest. I happen to have…
Aussie life
The dictionary definition of a banana republic refers to a country that has an economy dependent solely on revenue from…
