The Week
The poetic beauty of science
Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…
The virus is in retreat. Isn’t it time the public is trusted to decide how to behave?
Since the start of this year, cases of Covid-19 have been in decline. Hospital admissions have fallen 80 per cent…
Letters: What happens if interest rates rise?
Spinning plates Sir: Kate Andrews is right to highlight the looming risk of inflation (‘Rishi’s nightmare’, 6 March), but to…
Which TV interviews have attracted bigger audiences than Harry and Meghan’s?
Good for the goose The government indicated that it will ban foie gras, out of animal welfare concerns. While it…
Alex Salmond and the trouble with revenge
Ancient Greeks were not slow to express their enthusiasm for taking revenge. Observing the recent proceedings in the Scottish parliament,…
Portrait of the week: A Covid Budget, a Cotswold meteor and Angelina Jolie sells Churchill’s painting
Home First-dose coronavirus vaccinations totalled more than 20 million. A study suggested that in the over-eighties, a single dose of…
Which countries still haven’t had a single case of Covid?
French lessons France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in jail, with two of them suspended, for…
Letters: The key to Scotland’s future
The key to the Union Sir: ‘Love-bombing’ the Scottish electorate with supplemental spending in devolved areas (‘The break-up’, 27 February)…
Cicero knew that we should study the past, not cancel it
Modern historians, excoriating the past evils of e.g. slavery and imperialism are taking the understanding of history back to its…
The Sturgeon case exposes the fatal flaw in Scottish devolution
The campaign for a Scottish parliament was rooted in the notion of a ‘democratic deficit’. Scotland kept voting Labour but…
Hollywood can’t believe Harry’s dissed Queen Oprah
Santa Monica is a soothing place to be locked down. I moved here from New York for four months in…
The creeping criminalisation of causing offence
At a time when resources are scarce, the Merseyside Constabulary must have thought long and hard about its recent advertising…
Letters: Immunity passports are nothing to fear
Nothing to fear Sir: Many of us await the day when we can travel abroad for much-anticipated holidays — but…
Which Covid vaccine is really the most effective?
State of the art Graffiti on Edvard Munch’s first version of ‘The Scream’ was revealed to be the work of…
The Egyptians knew the value of accidental discoveries
The government has plans to fund a new research agency to back ‘cutting-edge science’. Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) I (367-282 bc), the…
George Osborne: Why I’m going into banking
Spring in Somerset — again. If someone had told me last February that I’d spend seven of the next 12…
Portrait of the week: A lockdown exit plan, Duke of Edinburgh in hospital and Texas in deep freeze
Home The much-anticipated decriminalisation of two consenting people meeting over coffee on a park bench was declared for 8 March…
Salmond, Sturgeon and why The Spectator went to court
Did Nicola Sturgeon lie to the Scottish parliament? A Holyrood committee into the now infamous Alex Salmond affair has been…
Letters: Immunity passports are nothing new
Too many bishops Sir: As a former Anglican clergyman, I have been following your articles about the current state of…
Do gender studies departments have a gender problem?
Target practice The government hit its target of giving a first Covid vaccine to 15 million of the most vulnerable…
How a Roman emperor would handle Navalny
A Roman emperor would consider the tyrant Putin’s treatment of Alexei Navalny’s supporters as foolish but, looking at Russia as…
Portrait of the week: Hotel quarantine starts, Ribblehead Viaduct cracks and a royal guest for Oprah
Home The target was achieved of vaccinating, by the middle of February, about 15 million people of 70 or over,…
Vaccines are working – so why isn’t society reopening?
When the Prime Minister sets out his ‘roadmap’ for easing Covid restrictions on Monday, it will be against a backdrop…
Universal Credit and the future of the welfare state
Amid the many failures of public policy during the Covid crisis, one success has gone largely unnoticed. The Universal Credit…
How often do tempers flare at parish meetings?
Temper, temper A Zoom video of a disruptive parish council meeting in Handforth, Cheshire, went viral. It is not the…
