Status anxiety
How to be a Lord
At the end of my first day at the House of Lords, I staggered out with so many books and…
The curse of Disney’s Snow White
One of the early decisions David Zaslav made after becoming the CEO of Warner Bros Discovery in 2022 was to…
I was right – and Gove was wrong – on lockdown
In an otherwise excellent article for the Sunday Telegraph last week about our government’s hopeless pandemic response, Dan Hannan made…
Are you offended by ‘hard-working families’?
Scarcely a day passes without a newspaper story about some absurd ‘language guide’ issued by a public body. This week…
Cracks are appearing in the Cathedral walls
Is the ‘Cathedral’ about to fall down? That’s the name given by the right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin to denote the…
Colombia is a better place to watch football than Loftus Road
I’ve just returned from Colombia, where I’ve been visiting my daughter. She’s doing a modern languages degree and has to…
Should free speech campaigners hope Andrew Gwynne is prosecuted?
David McKelvey, a former detective chief inspector in the Met Police, has called for the prosecution of Andrew Gwynne, the…
The trouble with criminalising ‘Islamophobia’
When I first heard that Angela Rayner had been tasked with creating an advisory council that will draw up an…
Beware this terrible new AI email feature
A friend of mine got a nasty shock last week after a Google Meet call, thanks to a new AI…
The Trump I (barely) know
I can’t say I know the new President of the United States very well, but during the five years I…
The highs and lows of Dry January
The first week of Dry January was relatively easy. Not falling asleep in front of the television was a pleasant…
Farewell Justin Trudeau, the last of the lockdown tyrants
So farewell then, Justin Trudeau, last of the lockdown tyrants. Or should that be the last of the democratically elected…
Can I be cancelled twice?
One of the biggest regrets of my life was saying yes when Jo Johnson asked if I wanted to be…
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…
Why Elon Musk shouldn’t be kicked out of the Royal Society
In a notorious interview in the Sunday Times in 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson said, among other things,…
At 61, it’s official: I’m ‘young old’
I read with some disappointment recently that the Encyclopaedia Britannica considers 61 – the age I am now – to…
Carry on Kafka: this is our Brave New World
An ex-copper who blogs as Dominic Adler – not his real name – came up with a good phrase this…
Must try harder, Education Secretary
The headmaster of one of the best comprehensives in the country was once asked the following question by Tony Blair:…
Did I deny my son a shot at the Premier League?
When my youngest son Charlie was seven he was talent-spotted by a QPR scout who saw him playing football in…
Will Keir Starmer get me banned from football games?
Last Saturday, I made the 400-mile round trip to Burnley with my 16-year-old son Charlie to see Queens Park Rangers…
A British First Amendment wouldn’t save free speech
Does the United Kingdom need a First Amendment? That’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, given the…
Starmer’s snowflakes’ charter
I almost choked on my cornflakes when I read that the Prime Minister had said he would slash red tape…
Yvette Cooper wants to lock up your sons
In his independent review of the Prevent programme last year, Sir William Shawcross warned that something had gone very wrong…
Did Michael Gove mean what he said?
I thought the Spectator dinner for Michael Gove hosted by Fraser Nelson would be cancelled. To be clear, this wasn’t…
Why play the Saudi anthem before an all-British boxing match?
For only the second time in my life, I went to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last weekend. At least,…
