The Spectator
11 January 2025 Aus
What real justice would look like for grooming gang victims
Australia
Follow the leader
Nothing better symbolises the dismal future that Labor and the Greens are preparing for Australia than the warning in a…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
Looking back over the last political year, I could not help but reflect that we certainly send some interesting representatives…
Australian Features
Albanounceables galore
Nothing excites the PM like telling you he’s spending your money
Delaying the inevitable
Trudeau should be allowed to prorogue the Canadian parliament
Crumbling Crinks
Now is not the time to make concessions to the axis of autocrats
Features
Why I’m voting for the AfD
On 23 February, I will vote for the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in the German general election. As someone…
Is anything still cheap?
Things used to cost approximately what you expected them to cost. Now, the price of almost every item is eye-wateringly,…
America’s new ally in the battle against Isis: the Taliban
Isis are back. In fact, to borrow Gerry Adams’s remark about the IRA, they never went away. Now, they are…
How the drive to end teen pregnancies aided the grooming gangs
How did the depraved cruelty of Britain’s grooming gangs go on for so long, so openly and with such seeming…
What real justice would look like for grooming gang victims
It is always interesting to watch a dam burst. In the past week, as Elon Musk and other prominent Americans…
Does Kemi Badenoch have a plan?
We are nearing the 50th anniversary, next month, of Margaret Thatcher becoming leader of the Conservative party. Only one other…
Luke Littler’s bland entourage
Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler, born two weeks after the first iPhone was unveiled, stormed the Professional Darts Corporation world championships…
The shocking truth about the Paedophile Information Exchange
The man who walked up the stairs was the embodiment of the cartoon image of a paedophile. Grey, thinning hair, a…
Claudia Winkleman understands the power of a cape
The cape is having a moment thanks to the Highland wardrobe of Claudia Winkleman, who is currently presenting The Traitors…
The Week
Letters | 11 January 2025
Growing problem Sir: The first leading article of the year (‘Growing apart’, 4 January) points to the gap in economic…
Our family is growing – and our dog is bound to be unimpressed
I am now well into my second pregnancy. Having conceived through IVF the first time, we were fortunate to have…
Portrait of the week: grooming gangs, wildfires and a Littler victory
Home Responding to a rejection by Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, of calls for a government inquiry into historical child…
The Greeks, not Labour, should be teaching children oracy
The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson wants schools to teach oracy, i.e. the ability to present orally a clear and cogent…
It’s time to fast-track our adoption process
The debate surrounding the sexual exploitation of thousands of children over decades, which has re-ignited this week, should act as…
Columnists
We need safeguarding from safeguarders
What does it mean, in practice, to say that reporting child abuse should be mandatory? It sounds appropriately severe, but…
Donald Trump and new political disorder
Donald Trump isn’t back in the White House yet, but already his victory is being felt across the world. Greenland…
Who’ll join my war against liberalism?
I can see one possible benefit of having a full inquiry into the almost exclusively Muslim grooming gangs who raped…
Keir Starmer, school harmer
Twin studies are one of the most useful exercises in scientific inquiry. Take two biologically identical children who are brought…
The case against a ‘climate emergency’
January is the ideal month for gaining a sense of perspective. I’m increasingly convinced that the ‘climate emergency’ is another…
Should you leave the country? Other questions for 2025
I was intending to write one of those ‘Ten tips to change your life’ lists that fill so many column…
Books
Bad vibrations: Lazarus Man, by Richard Price, reviewed
Shudderings from a subway extension in Harlem causes a tenement building to collapse, killing six people and leading to many missing in this cinematic thriller
Alexander Pushkin – Russia’s greatest letter-writer
Intimate, earthy and uninhibited, Pushkin’s letters, collected together, read like a novel and give an encyclopaedic view of 19th-century Russian life
Norman Lewis – a restless adventurer with a passion for broken-down places
John Hatt’s latest selection of the travel writer’s journalism includes articles on Castro’s Havana, the Yemen of the Imams, Batista’s Cuba, French Indo-China and Neapolitan men of honour
Outlandish epic: Lies and Sorcery, by Elsa Morante, reviewed
Spanning three generations of Sicilian women, this family saga of honour, deception and class politics is also a study in morality and the petty ways in which it is eroded
Rebellion and repression: Oromay, by Baalu Girma, reviewed
Girma’s semi-autobiographical thriller follows the efforts of the Marxist Mengistu to crush secessionist Eritrea in the bloody aftermath of Haile Selassie’s downfall
A winter’s tale: Brightly Shining, by Ingvild Rishoi, reviewed
In a poignant story reminiscent of ‘The Little Match Girl’, two Norwegian children try to dodge social services by selling wreaths and Christmas trees when their father fails to provide for them
The Vikings never really went away
The Norsemen were settlers as well as raiders, and by the 860s had built up a ‘great heathen army’ to conquer and colonise much of Britain and the Continent
Versailles’s role as a palace of science
The vast seat of Bourbon power also doubled as a laboratory for experiments in astronomy, hydraulics, engineering, ballooning, medicine, mathematics and cartography
The joy of discussing life’s great questions with a philosopher friend
A higher form of love than romance or conjugal felicity was what Socrates offered in his dialogues, says Agnes Callard
Once upon a time in Germany: the Grimms’ legacy of revenge and gory redemption
The Household Tales only attained their standing after the brothers’ death, with the unification of Germany and the decades of nationalism that led to catastrophe
Arts
Thrillers
It’s funny the preconceptions you have about the Christmas/New Year period. I hadn’t anticipated seeing Juror #2 the new Clint…
The problem with Paul McCartney is he wrote too many good songs
Don Bradman, the greatest cricketer of all time, was once asked if he reckoned he could have maintained his batting…
What makes a good title?
Liszt’s compositions tend to have descriptive titles – ‘Wild Chase’; ‘Dreams of Love’ – whereas Chopin avoided titles. Thomas Wentworth…
Jolie good: Maria reviewed
Maria is a film by Pablo Larrain, who appears to have a soft spot for the psychodramas of legendary women…
The Natural History Museum’s new Evolution Garden is inspired
The Natural History Museum is one of the most beautiful buildings in London, but its gardens have long been a…
The architectural provocations of I.M. Pei
When first considering architects for the new Louvre in 1981, Emile Biasini, the project’s head, liked that I.M. Pei was…
Why I’m obsessed with Farming Today
Farming Today airs at an undignified hour each morning on Radio 4. On the few occasions I’ve caught it live…
Exquisite: Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed
The Invention of Love opens with death. Tom Stoppard’s play about A.E. Housman starts on the banks of the Styx,…
Life
Aussie life
It’s hardly surprising that Doris Day’s jaunty homage to Marcus Aurelius ‘Que sera, sera’ was one of the 1956’s best-selling…
Language
At the start of each year, Lake Superior State University publishes a list of ‘Banished Words.’ These are the words…
In defence of BA’s new loyalty scheme
One of my favourite cartoons shows a couple sitting in luxury at the front of a plane, the wife peeking…
The Irish laugh in the face of EU regulations
Our house was suddenly shrouded in a thick, grey mass of cloud and it felt like a sea fog had…
Kemi should prepare for a political pounding
It is extraordinary to remember. When I was a small boy in Scotland, Christmas Day was not a holiday. My…
Blitz decision
‘To share is to do’, as no Latin proverb dared to suggest. The 2024 Fide World Blitz championship, held in…
My YouTube rabbit hole
How do you live with yourself when 179 air passengers are burned alive on a South Korean runway, and you’ve…
January deserves lemon pudding
January kitchens are my favourite. This isn’t anything against Christmas – I love the spice, the frenzy, the ritual of…
Dear Mary: should I tell people I’m WFB (Working from Barbados)?
Q. We live in a harmonious and social community in Berkshire and early last year our fun-loving neighbours invited us…
Farewell Justin Trudeau, the last of the lockdown tyrants
So farewell then, Justin Trudeau, last of the lockdown tyrants. Or should that be the last of the democratically elected…











































































