The Spectator
Australia
Quantum of decline
On too many fronts, our civilisation and our decency are crumbling before our eyes. The beauty, of course, of the…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
Here at the Spectator Australia Political Research Institute we have been grappling with the most contentious issue that is currently …
Australian Features
Features
Tom Cruise and the art of falconry
Last week, the Hollywood team making the latest Mission Impossible film was desperate to clear Trafalgar Square of its superabundant…
How universities raised a new generation of activists
It was only a matter of time before America’s student protests spread to the UK. In Oxford, tents have been…
Bugs, biscuits, trench foot: from the front line of the uni protests
On the grass in front of UCL’s main building, on Sunday night, there were about 30 tents and the portico…
The Israeli-Hamas negotiations are fraught with complexity
Jerusalem For weeks the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had been preparing for an assault on Rafah. Yet when the order…
Why do people make excuses for surly staff?
‘You grab that table, I’ll get the drinks.’ I did as bid. A couple of minutes later, Paul was back,…
Georgia is on the brink of revolution
For weeks, the Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi has looked like a battlefield. Thousands of protestors, mostly in their twenties, have…
What Xi wants in Europe
On a quiet street in Belgrade, a bronze statue of Confucius stands in front of a perforated white block, the…
Sex and the shires: Plum Sykes reveals all
‘I looked at a picture of him today and thought: “Why are you wearing those expensive clothes, you twit?”’ Plum…
The Week
My Britney Spears Theory of Action
Every week I check the weather in Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Svalbard. It’s about as close as you can…
Portrait of the week: Tory defections, local elections and a China defence hack
Home The local elections proved dreadful for the Conservatives but not quite perfect for Labour. The Conservatives lost 474 of…
Tories for Starmer
Nick Boles was once at the heart of a mission to renew Conservatism. He was one of a small number…
Letters: the Tory party has gone mad
Right is wrong Sir: Katy Balls’s article ‘Survival Plan’ (4 May) starts from a false premise. The problem is not…
Were the Ancient Greeks shameless?
Last week Mary Wakefield discussed the virtues of her ‘Victorian’ education, designed to stiffen the upper lip of the young…
Columnists
Save us from the plague of plastic tree protectors
Can nothing protect us from a plague of plastic tree protectors? They’ve descended on us like locusts, covering our hills,…
How to bottle Britishness
The US crackdown on trade finance for Russia from international banks – designed to impede imports needed for the continuing…
The battle of the pollsters
There was plenty for Rishi Sunak and his cabinet to discuss on Tuesday morning. The Conservatives had lost half of…
The science behind Olivia Colman’s left-wing face
The new hunting year formally began last week. Should I resubscribe? Politically, the outlook is bleak. In February, Steve Reed,…
In defence of my friend Kevin Spacey
I am looking for a way to get £80,000. The sum would come in handy. I could put it towards…
I hate hate speech laws
I originally intended to observe that American universities’ anti-Israel protestors and Hamas terrorists deserve each other, because they’ve so much…
Books
The endless fascination of volcanoes
Tamsin Mather is the latest highly articulate volcanologist to combine vivid personal experience with thoughtful scientific explanation
Kindness backfires: Sufferance, by Charles Palliser, reviewed
When the father of a family takes in a lost young girl from a minority ethnic group, he puts his own household at risk as racial persecution mounts
The traditional British hedge is fast vanishing
The best hedges teem with the biodiversity that plays such a vital part in our future. Yet, since the 1950s, farmers and developers have been destroying them at an alarming rate
The perils of waiting on a Tudor queen
Henry VIII considered the queen’s household a fruitful hunting-ground – for a mistress, a future wife, or a pawn, whose testimony could provide useful damaging evidence
Exploring the glorious literary heritage of Bengal
Bengalis are renowned for their love of discussion and argument, and a new collection of short stories reflects this passion for cultured conversation
What do we mean when we talk of ‘home’?
Though deeply attached to her ‘squat, odd-looking house’ near Uffington, Clover Stroud comes to realise that home is as much about bonds between people as a particular place
There’s much to be said for nostalgia
Instead of condemning it as dangerous fantasy, two new books argue that we should welcome nostalgia as ‘emotional armour’ in a fast-changing world
When the local wizard was the repository of all wisdom
Before the arrival of ‘proper’ doctors, everyone in the Middle Ages, from rulers to peasants, turned to magic practitioners and cunning folk for healing and advice
‘There are an awful lot of my paintings I don’t like’, admitted Francis Bacon
While waspishly dismissive of many of the 20th century’s greatest artists, Bacon was also critical of his own work, in conversation with David Sylvester
Arts
Dark and crooked byways
Isn’t it strange that the new television, the television of the streamers which has dominated our world since Covid, has…
Dense, melancholic, hypnotic: Brighde Chaimbeul, at Summerhall, reviewed
The hip end of the folk spectrum is in rude health right now. Dublin’s mighty Lankum lead the way, but…
There are passages of considerable eloquence in Royal Ballet’s The Winter’s Tale
There’s no escaping Christopher Wheeldon – a modest, amiable fellow from Yeovil of whom anyone’s mum would be proud. Reaching…
Across Britain punters are lapping up ultra-trad opera – the Arts Council will be disgusted
Another week at the opera, another evening with an elitist and ethically dubious art form. I love it; you love…
Minority Report is superficial pap – why on earth stage it?
Minority Report is a plodding bit of sci-fi based on a Steven Spielberg movie made more than two decades ago.…
Wonderfully special: La chimera reviewed
La chimera, which, as in English, means something like ‘the unrealisable dream’, is the latest film from Italian writer/director Alice…
Why did C.J. Sansom ok this moronic Disney+ Shardlake adaptation?
What would C.J. Sansom have made of the Disney+ version of his novel series about 16th-century crookback lawyer Matthew Shardlake?…
A gripping podcast about America’s obsession with guns
The love affair between so many Americans and their guns – long a source of international fascination – appears to…
Fascinating insight into the mind of Michelangelo
You’re pushing 60 and an important patron asks you to repeat an artistic feat you accomplished in your thirties. There’s…
Life
Aussie life
As the terrible events in Bondi Junction last month reminded us, fortune doesn’t always favour the brave. Indeed, the courage…
Language
Speccie reader Terry writes to ask when and where did ‘non-binary’ come into the language – and who applied it…
Do voters really prefer Starmer?
Rishi Sunak has been widely ridiculed for trying to spin the local election results as bad news for Keir Starmer.…
How to solve ‘range anxiety’
In ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, Sherlock Holmes mentions ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. ‘But the…
Dear Mary: what should I do if a fellow passenger is reading porn?
Q. On a recent short-haul flight, I had the misfortune to be seated next to a much older man who…
Do sparks really fly?
‘Sparks,’ said my husband, after a short pause. I had asked him what one could spark. His answer was true…
How to become an old soak
Drink and longevity: there seems to have been a successful counter-attack against the puritans, prohibitionists and other health faddists. Indeed,…
My battle with the dreaded ‘black cotton’
Laikipia, Kenya By the time I set off from the farm before dawn we’d had 22in of rain in the…
Do charities really deserve my mum’s data?
A letter from Archie Norman, chairman of M&S, popped into my inbox after I complained that I had run over…
My vote winner? Banning ‘fun’ runs
One of us must once have told a political pollster: ‘I really have no idea at all who I’m going…














































































