The Week
Boris Johnson needs to face down his own people
To beat the virus, the government is asking us to keep to simple hands-face-space guidelines. When these are not followed,…
Portrait of the week: new alerts, birthday honours and fires on Kilimanjaro
Home ‘The weeks and months ahead will continue to be difficult and will test the mettle of this country,’ Boris…
Why isn’t the germaphobe President afraid of coronavirus?
The weird thing about Donald Trump’s handling of Covid-19, alongside all the other weird things, is that he has always…
Mind the gap: how wide is the North-South divide?
Red light, green light The three tiers of Covid restrictions have been described as a ‘traffic light’ system. — The…
Britain is a successful melting pot – and the government should say so
When the Black Lives Matter protests struck London in the same week that Public Health England published a report into…
Boris’s hero Pericles didn’t need a spokeswoman
A spokeswoman has been appointed ‘to communicate with the nation on behalf of the Prime Minister’. He apparently needs ‘a…
Letters: what unites the two sides of the mask debate
Wind worries Sir: You are right to side with the 2013 version of Boris Johnson, when he claimed that wind…
Portrait of the week: Boris’s wind power pledge, Trump catches Covid and James Bond kills Cineworld
Home Coronavirus was on the increase. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 4 October, total deaths (within 28 days…
East Anglia is the place for birds
I first visited Orford in 1970, at peak Cold War when this stretch of the East Anglian coast was one…
Now the Tories must make it their mission to repair the country
The centrepiece of Boris Johnson’s speech to Tory party conference this year was his Damascene conversion to the merits of…
What happens when a US president dies?
Vice squad Donald Trump catching Covid-19 has concentrated minds on what happens if a US president dies in office. Normally,…
How to be content
The Covid-19 pandemic is apparently causing a large number of mental health problems. On that subject, one could do a…
Letters: The sorry state of BBC sport
Misplaced Trust Sir: Charles Moore is as ever bang on target (The Spectator’s Notes, 26 September). National Trust members have…
Portrait of the week: Curfew street parties, Trump’s taxes and a bone-eating vulture
Home More than a quarter of the population of the United Kingdom (three-fifths of the Welsh, a third of the…
The Socratic approach to Covid
Organs of the press are filled with opinion pages. The sublime confidence about Covid with which commentators advance these opinions,…
Petronella Wyatt: My food fights with Boris
I have been in Istanbul, partly to research a French-born collateral ancestor of mine, Aimée Dubucq, who, according to legend,…
Who started America’s presidential debates?
Word for word US presidential debates are often traced back to the first televised debate, between Richard Nixon and John…
Letters: Lessons for Boris from the classroom
Lessons for the government Sir: James Forsyth suggests that the Prime Minister wishes to avoid sounding as if he is…
The lockdown battle of Marseilles is a warning for Boris
From the vantage point of Downing Street, Boris Johnson may feel reassured that the further measures against Covid-19 he imposed…
Should a Good Citizen snitch on neighbours?
If neighbours break whatever new Covid rules might soon emerge, it has been suggested that the Good Citizen might snitch…
Barbara Amiel: My memoir has cost me my best friends
The only female writers of importance I have personally met are Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion, both of whom are…
Whose bright idea was the circuit-breaker?
It’s electrifying! Who invented the circuit-breaker? Thomas Edison patented it in 1879, realising what damage could be caused to electrical…
Letters: It’s too late for Boris
Disastrous decisions Sir: In his otherwise excellent analysis of Boris Johnson’s premiership (‘The missing leader’, 19 September), Fraser Nelson suggests…
Iran hasn’t earned the right to bear arms
Hard though it is to remember now, 2020 began with a very different dark cloud on the horizon. For a…
Portrait of the week: New Covid restrictions, a Supreme Court vacancy and an earthquake in Leighton Buzzard
Home Pubs and restaurants would have to close at ten o’clock, under new coronavirus restrictions announced by Boris Johnson, the…
