The Week
Portrait of the Week
Home The government seemed to be taken strangely unaware by the frenzy of recrimination that came its way when results…
Barometer
Pink and twisted Bernard Matthews, which stopped making Turkey Twizzlers in 2005 after criticism about unhealthy school dinners from Jamie…
Diary
It’s three days since rumours swirled around France that President Macron was going to impose a ‘tit-for-tat’ quarantine on UK…
Exam failures
It was obvious that closing schools would hit the poorest hardest, inflicting permanent damage and deepening inequality. While many private…
Rotating the Lords
Arguments about the purpose or indeed very existence of anything resembling the House of Lords would have struck classical democratic…
Portrait of the week
Home In fine weather with calm seas, 565 migrants in four days crossed the Channel in small craft. French officials…
Barometer
Some like it hot Are heatwaves becoming a devalued currency? Last year the Met Office defined a heatwave as three…
Diary
I have known Ghislaine Maxwell for more than 40 years, since she was a student at Balliol. I always liked…
Letters
The future of offices Sir: I agree with much of Gerard Lyons’s article about the future of the capital (‘London…
Diary
It is a particular pleasure to be returning to the columns of The Spectator, more than half a century after…
Mood shift
Throughout the past few months the government has appeared to face an unenviable choice between saving lives and saving livelihoods.…
Portrait of the week
Home Some 2.7 million people in Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, where many Muslims live, were…
Weighty matters
Tackling obesity is the latest government initiative, universally condemned as nannying. Ask a Spartan. From an early age, Spartan children…
Letters
Peer review Sir: A neat solution to the levels of inactivity of some members of the House of Lords (‘Peer…
Barometer
The other Argos The Argos catalogue, known as the ‘Book of Dreams’, is no longer to appear in printed form.…
Peer pressure
It is no credit to British democracy that we have the second largest legislative chamber in the world. The only…
Letters
Masking the truth Sir: Matthew Parris is right to laud the importance of embracing the scientific method (‘Why should opinion…
Barometer
The first nanny state The Prime Minister’s strategy on obesity has been labelled a work of the ‘nanny state’ —…
Diary
Four years ago, I bought a ranch in Wyoming. Not that I was tired of New York, but I’m fascinated…
Portrait of the week
Home At a few hours’ notice, the government removed Spain from the list of countries from which it was possible…
Letters
Left-behind boys Sir: Christopher Snowdon’s perceptive and informative article (‘The lost boys’, 18 July) reflects perfectly my own experiences in…
The EU’s new fault lines
Anyone who imagined that the departure of Britain would make for more harmonious EU summits in future will have been…
On a Roman road
Should the PM move parliament to York? There is, of course, historical precedent for such a move, as he very…
Portrait of the Week
Home A coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, tested on 1,077 people, was found to induce antibodies and…
Diary
I’ve been a regular runner for 40 years, pounding my way across Hampstead Heath to Kenwood House and back. This…
