The Week
Diary
Here’s a tip. When the Foreign Office advises against going somewhere, hop on the next plane. The mandarins have advised…
The madness of crowds
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
Home ‘The weeks and months ahead will continue to be difficult and will test the mettle of this country,’ Boris…
Diary
The weird thing about Donald Trump’s handling of Covid-19, alongside all the other weird things, is that he has always…
Barometer
Red light, green light The three tiers of Covid restrictions have been described as a ‘traffic light’ system. — The…
A united kingdom
When the Black Lives Matter protests struck London in the same week that Public Health England published a report into…
Who speaks for Boris?
A spokeswoman has been appointed ‘to communicate with the nation on behalf of the Prime Minister’. He apparently needs ‘a…
Letters
Wind worries Sir: You are right to side with the 2013 version of Boris Johnson, when he claimed that wind…
Portrait of the week
Home Coronavirus was on the increase. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 4 October, total deaths (within 28 days…
Diary
I first visited Orford in 1970, at peak Cold War when this stretch of the East Anglian coast was one…
Boris’s second wind
The centrepiece of Boris Johnson’s speech to Tory party conference this year was his Damascene conversion to the merits of…
Barometer
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
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
Home More than a quarter of the population of the United Kingdom (three-fifths of the Welsh, a third of the…
Too clever by half
Organs of the press are filled with opinion pages. The sublime confidence about Covid with which commentators advance these opinions,…
Diary
I have been in Istanbul, partly to research a French-born collateral ancestor of mine, Aimée Dubucq, who, according to legend,…
Barometer
Word for word US presidential debates are often traced back to the first televised debate, between Richard Nixon and John…
Letters
Lessons for the government Sir: James Forsyth suggests that the Prime Minister wishes to avoid sounding as if he is…
Lockdown fatigue
From the vantage point of Downing Street, Boris Johnson may feel reassured that the further measures against Covid-19 he imposed…
Revenge of the snitch
If neighbours break whatever new Covid rules might soon emerge, it has been suggested that the Good Citizen might snitch…
Diary
The only female writers of importance I have personally met are Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion, both of whom are…
Barometer
It’s electrifying! Who invented the circuit-breaker? Thomas Edison patented it in 1879, realising what damage could be caused to electrical…
Letters
Disastrous decisions Sir: In his otherwise excellent analysis of Boris Johnson’s premiership (‘The missing leader’, 19 September), Fraser Nelson suggests…
Don’t arm Iran
Hard though it is to remember now, 2020 began with a very different dark cloud on the horizon. For a…
