Life
AI Armageddon has replaced climate change hysteria
How worried should we be about AI? Absolutely petrified, according to a new documentary called Chasing Utopia. Billed as the…
A foolproof way to pick a leader
Our esteemed editor was once excoriated for saying that the public had had enough of experts. ‘The people of this…
Is it ‘common’ to look at a restaurant bill before paying?
Q. My sister has married in later life and we all like her husband. They have moved nearby and now…
2753: Rapid sea
The 23D 41A, stirred up by 3D and 6A 26D the mother of 29A. Unclued lights identify the protagonist and…
Spectator Competition: One way
For Competition 3450 you were invited to submit a short story written in words of one syllable. This challenge produced…
Clash of Generations
At the start of May, 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus became the youngest player in history to cross the symbolic 2700…
Aussie life
There are statistics and damn statistics, and the truth may lie somewhere between the two. The Economist recently touted that…
Language
When Donald Trump says he is ready for military action he often says he (or, rather the US military) is…
The joy of iced buns
‘It’s just a hot dog bun with icing!’ the iced-bun detractors will shriek. I’m a lady with a lot of…
The secret to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s racehorse success
You meet an eclectic bunch of people in the horse-racing business. Yet it was at prep school 55 years ago…
Declan Rice is an island of decency in modern football
As all but the most tribal fruitcases would agree, Arsenal’s Declan Rice is an island of decency in the rather…
Dear Mary: how can I shut up a noisy fellow diner?
Q. I was lunching at a writers’ club in Lexington Street. It is a small but agreeable space. At one…
What do the French see in Ireland?
As the eco-tourism season got under way, the confused-looking French people began to arrive. They come to see ‘la nature’,…
True freedom is wearing someone else’s pants
Kyrgyzstan Forget the detailed itinerary – a 12-day trip that included the vertiginous 2,446-metre Kotorma pass on horseback – the…
‘I wanted to lie face down in the hummus’: Erev reviewed
Erev is an Israeli restaurant in Notting Hill, though Israeli restaurants do not call themselves Israeli nowadays. They have rebranded…
Spectator Competition: Shrink away
Comp. 3449 invited you to psychoanalyse, in the manner of Freud/Jung etc, a 2026 phenomenon. In a small but accomplished…
First they came for Mandelson…
At the time of writing, I haven’t seen the King’s Speech, but it’s a safe bet it will include a…
