Life
The Spectator’s 2024 Christmas quiz
Events, dear boy In 2024: 1. Twenty-two tons of what were stolen from Neal’s Yard in London? 2. Down…
Bridge | 14 December 2024
Last year, my new year’s resolution was to make fewer careless mistakes at the bridge table. Easier, surely, than cutting…
My racing reads of the year
You didn’t want to approach Davy Russell before a race. He spurned selfies with owners and didn’t talk to the…
Retracing the steps of slaves in Benin
Ouidah, Benin On a free afternoon in Benin, I decide to walk the slave route in Ouidah, the port from…
What will become of artists who paint?
What hope is there for artists following the sale recently of the robot Ai-Da’s portrait of Alan Turing, entitled ‘A.I.…
I shouldn’t be allowed to go to church
‘Life is changed, not ended,’ said the slogan on the lectern as the priest told his flock what to think…
The strange, beautiful Christmas I spent alone
My parents gave up on Christmas altogether once I left home for university. They had never been people for celebrations…
How to make chocolate salami
For as long as we’ve been serving food, we’ve been unable to resist a bit of culinary deception. Making one…
What’s really killing business
Late in the evening six months ago, my wife and I were driving back to our hotel in the dark…
My bottles of the year
This has been the most fascinating political year I can remember. I have even found myself dreaming about politics –…
The best (and worst) of this year’s sport
It was quite a year for some of the worst of sport – America’s golfers, already among the richest and…
Could I limit myself to 100 bottles of wine in a year?
Back in January, I wrote about my new year’s resolution to cut down on my drinking. The thought of total…
Dear Mary, from Michael Caine: Should cricketers be paid like footballers?
From Tina Brown Q. I have been dogged all my career as ‘the Queen of Buzz’, which makes people assume…
Something out of a Spectator reader’s dreams: The Guinea Grill reviewed
Back to the past: it’s safer there. There is a themed restaurant dedicated to George VI of all people, near…
Aussie life
The University of Sydney’s Environment Institute (SEI) was launched in 2014 by Professor David Schlosberg ahead of a lecture discussing…
Language
Speccie reader Louise has been in touch with an intelligent question that must have occurred to many of us over…
Tenerife is a soap opera in the sun
A warm Sahara wind was blowing and by late afternoon the western sky where it met the sea was the…
Advent is the season for revelling in fine wine
Crime. Fear not: none of us was planning to break the law, with the possible exception of hate speech. Where…
The joy of the Turkish barber
Just as you always hope will happen, I knew I had met the man of my dreams almost on sight.…
The Ginger Rogers theory of information
I had a friend whose approach to entrepreneurialism was to take two separate things that seemed stupidly popular and somehow…
