The Week
Diary
When an old friend X came to dinner in London, I sampled what it must have been like during the…
Continental drift
It is a long time since the term ‘sick man of Europe’ could be applied to Britain. France is now…
Portrait of the week
Home Two British men were charged with immigration offences after the rescue by night of 18 Albanian migrants, two of…
Diary
In 1873, when Jules Verne published his Around the World in Eighty Days, it seemed worth betting that a circumnavigation…
Aristotle vs the civil service
The civil service is to be allowed to find out what job applicants’ ‘socio-economic background’ is. What abject drivel is…
Against armistice
From ‘President Wilson and the Lessons of History’, 2 June 1916: Emphatically it is not a war of what we…
Australian letters
A Del Con writes… Sir, your leading article of 28 May 2016 sets out the terrible choice we face on…
Continental drift
It is a long time since the term ‘sick man of Europe’ could be applied to Britain. France is now…
Aristotle vs the civil service
The civil service is to be allowed to find out what job applicants’ ‘socio-economic background’ is. What abject drivel is…
Diary
In 1873, when Jules Verne published his Around the World in Eighty Days, it seemed worth betting that a circumnavigation…
Against armistice
From ‘President Wilson and the Lessons of History’, 2 June 1916: Emphatically it is not a war of what we…
Letters
Cameron’s bluster Sir: Peter Oborne is surely right that lying and cheating are now commonplace in the heart of government…
Portrait of the week
Home Two British men were charged with immigration offences after the rescue by night of 18 Albanian migrants, two of…
Losing faith
A landmark in national life has just been passed. For the first time in recorded history, those declaring themselves to…
Diary
Why do we assume all doctors are good? We don’t think there are no bad cooks or bad plumbers. But…
Plutarch and the EU
Boris Johnson argues that the current European Union is yet another failed attempt to replicate the golden age of a…
The dogs of peace
From ‘Food dictatorship’, The Spectator, 27 May 1916: Nobody would like to see the whole race of dogs exterminated, but…
Australian letters
Not gay Sir: Ian Thompson in his review of Freedman’s book “ The Murderous History of Biblical Translations …” (Spectator…
Losing faith
A landmark in national life has just been passed. For the first time in recorded history, those declaring themselves to…
Plutarch and the EU
Boris Johnson argues that the current European Union is yet another failed attempt to replicate the golden age of a…



















