The Week
Portrait of the week
Home Floods grew worse in the West Country. The village of Moorland, Somerset, was abandoned. Then the Thames flooded, from…
Diary
There’s no reason why you should have heard of me. No reason why you would have watched a Channel 4…
Barometer
A kamikaze pilot at 80 The Japanese city of Minami-Kyushu was attacked for wanting to add the letters of 1,036…
Rome’s student politics
Foreign students getting on to courses under false pretences, overstaying their welcome and so on are nothing new. Ask the Romans.…
Australian letters
Keep the Lord’s Prayer Sir: Chris Ashton has outlined three reasons why recitation of the Lord’s Prayer should be removed…
Floods of incompetence
When Prince Charles arrived in Somerset to meet some of those caught up in the disaster which in five weeks…
Portrait of the week
Home The Somerset Levels continued to wallow in floods. The Environment Agency was widely blamed for not having dredged channels,…
Diary
As any author will tell you, literary festivals differ widely. If you are invited to Willy Dalrymple’s Jaipur Festival, with…
Barometer
Our first winter Hopes will not be high for a big haul of British medals in Sochi, but we have…
Letters
Private pain Sir: A line in Alec Marsh’s article (‘Britain’s one-child policy’, 1 February) caught my eye; that school fees…
Rebels without a cause
Things could scarcely be going better for the Conservatives. Every week seems to bring more news of the recovery. High…
Portrait of the week
Home Britain’s gross domestic product grew by 1.9 per cent last year, the most since 2007, according to the Office…
Diary
When visiting Britain and Australia last November, I discovered that the mayor of Toronto, Robert Ford, is now the world’s…
Barometer
The political life of Walter Mitty Nigel Farage attacked the ‘Walter Mittys’ in his own party. A few of the…
Democritus on the 50p rate
What a song and dance about a tax rise affecting a minuscule proportion of the richest in society! Greeks would…
Letters
Too right wing Sir: I have been a subscriber to The Spectator since the early Eighties. Like many readers I…
Pilling’s progress
Four bishops and a retired civil servant shut away in a palace, talking about human sexuality — it sounds like the…
Portrait of the week
Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that he was in favour of increasing the minimum wage by…
Diary
You have to hand it to Supermac. Fifty years after the event, he is still running rings round them. The…
In our best interests
There is, apparently, an ‘obesity epidemic’ in the UK, such that two million people could benefit from weight-loss surgery. Ancient Greeks…
Barometer
One for the road Road safety campaigners were angered by the opening of the first pub at a motorway service…
Letters
On Benefits Street Sir: Fraser Nelson asserts that people in charities do not want to talk about what life is…
Wolves of Whitehall
This week, Martin Scorsese’s film The Wolf of Wall Street opened and the Office of National Statistics reported that house…
Portait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that English local authorities would be allowed to receive all the business rates…
Diary
I now live in the hippest part of London, Shoreditch. It must be Tony Blair’s idea of heaven, a multicultural…
