Diary
Nick Timothy: Theresa May folded like a Brompton bike during the Brexit negotiations
As my train hurtles northward, my phone starts to buzz. Jeremy Corbyn has agreed to hold a December election. So:…
Should we be blaming Balliol, rather than Eton, for our political woes?
In our house, the biggest source of tension is that I think there is an important difference between deferring a…
Helena Morrissey: my manifesto for the next govenor of the Bank of England
The start of term at Oxford University is bittersweet for the close-knit Morrisseys; we have just ‘lost’ three offspring to…
Even Donald Trump is tweeting about Spectator USA
We’ve just launched the US edition of The Spectator and the reaction so far has been great. Americans can be…
Richard Dawkins: It’s hard to imagine that Leave would win a second referendum
On a book tour to promote Outgrowing God, travelling from London’s Festival Hall to Birmingham and then Manchester, I have…
Robert Hardman: My private encounter with David Cameron and the Queen
David Cameron’s revelation that he sought ‘a raising of the eyebrow’ from the Queen during the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign…
Nick Robinson: Am I the new John Humphrys?
The nation is deeply divided. We can, it seems, talk of almost nothing else. Passions could scarcely be higher. No…
George Osborne: I tried to swap jobs with William Hague
I could be that rare thing: a former chancellor who is still a member of the Conservative party. Philip Hammond…
Rory Stewart: Am I still a Conservative?
My parents gave me a subscription to The Spectator in 1984, when I was 11. When I was 12, I…
Prue Leith: My plan to get real catering back into hospitals
Picture the scene: we are filming the opening link for The Great British Bake Off. Here I am in the…
Brace yourself for no deal
I AM up on the far north-west coast of Scotland, where the weather is changing every five minutes under vast skies…
Rachel Johnson: which political party should I join next?
I lay low during the ‘season’ as I can’t think what to say to people any more. I went to…
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I’m prejudiced against the Oxford comma
It is rare that losing a day at Lord’s for a Test match is welcome. I had expected to be…
Penny Mordaunt: I’m fired. Job done
I begin the week in Bamako, Mali, with a crackly telephone call to Commodore Dean Bassett, UK Maritime Component Commander…
Paul Dacre: I made Boris Johnson cry
So the party of family values has chosen as leader a man of whom to say he has the morals…
Nick Robinson: I’ve underestimated Boris ever since our Oxford clashes
By this time next week the Johnson era will surely have begun. ‘We can, we will, we must now escape…
Petronella Wyatt: I’ve been turned into a curiosity – and Boris is to blame
I am beginning to feel like a sort of fairground curiosity: one of those pickled things in jars that Victorians…
Joan Collins: The night I got a TV star to flash Boris Johnson
It has been a spring of party madness in London and New York. I was lucky enough to have several…
Will Boris Johnson break up the Union?
I spent the early part of last week in London, filming what are known in the television trade as PTCs…
History will wonder how we trusted Boris with Britain
I am besieged by media folk asking when I shall make good on a four-year-old threat to flee to Buenos…
Simon Schama: I’m on tour – singing. Yes, seriously
It was when the kindly folk at the Theatre Royal Haymarket said ‘You’ll be in Paul Whitehouse’s dressing-room’ that it…
Everything under the sun: The glory of garden centres
Don’t you just love garden centres? You have to be mad to go on a sunny Sunday morning in the…
History will be kinder to Theresa May than we have been
Recording the BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures has brought me to five cities and five styles of questioning. Cardiff had…
A presidential pardon for my ‘miraculously shrinking crime’
I owe my return to these pages to the pardon I have received from the President of the United States.…
As a gay Jewish man I did not expect to be spat at in a west London street
There are many places where a gay Jewish couple wearing yarmulkes wouldn’t feel comfortable walking down the street. I didn’t…
