The Spectator
12 August 2023 Aus
Albo’s fake truth-telling
Australia
Albo’s fake truth-telling
As this magazine has pointed out, and not always tongue-in-cheek, wait long enough and today’s vehemently denounced conspiracy theory is…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
There is certainly a right for former judges to put an advertisement in the newspapers extolling the virtues of the…
Australian Features
Thank you, Dame Alison, thank you, Peter
For exposing the craziness of your woke banking practices
Europe’s summer of climate hysteria
But voters continue to move against the Green tide
Features
The Week
On board
Over decades of service as a floating hotel, the Bibby Stockholm has accommodated all manner of people. It has housed…
Columnists
Divided they fall
Earlier this summer, a hundred or so Londoners gathered around a solar-powered stage truck at Highbury Fields to celebrate 40…
You can’t fight injustice with injustice
This week’s truism: all top-down attempts at leftie social engineering end up causing rather more misery and injustice than the…
Putin vs Pride
In an outstanding article in the New York Times, Roger Cohen recounted his experience of travelling across Russia for a…
Another beautiful layer of bureaucracy
‘Only boring people get bored’ is what we were all told as children. What we were not warned about was…
The hypocrisy of the Farage outcry
Much heartened by the barrage of criticism I’ve been receiving from both Spectator and Times readers, I’m returning to the…
Books
The new orthodoxy
The decolonisers in Britain’s universities are not just trying to defend their views. They are seeking to upend the free market in ideas by imposing them, says Doug Stokes
Violence in the Valley
When a man with a machete infiltrates a local synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, the peace of one the ‘greenest, quietest, safest’ places in America is shattered
Going for broke
The founding member of the Small Faces was playing an instrument from the age of six, but was forever haunted by the fear of MS, the inherited disease which eventually killed him
Barefaced lies
Mark Hollingsworth describes how the KGB became the world’s most industrious conspiracy-theory factory, with its agents of influence dedicated to sowing maximum confusion
Tales of the Midwest
Violence and death are balanced by hard-won, transcendent joy in Beard’s remarkable stories that merge fiction and memoir
The one and only
With its carefully calibrated sense of time, the Iliad is clearly the work of a single man and not a ‘rolling snowball’ of different contributions, argues Robin Lane Fox
Reigns of terror
The nomadic tribes of Central Asia eventually created vast empires that changed not only their own world but western history, says Kenneth W. Harl
A tidal wave of disinformation
Grotesque conspiracy theories merge and snowball, with serious global consequences. James Ball proposes a Digital Health System to counter the ‘pathogens’
Other worlds, other lives
A scientist finds a way to access other realities and bequeaths the secret to her daughter. But a dangerous adversary is on the trail
The waking nightmare
After years of insomnia, Marie Darrieussecq derives some comfort from finding herself in the company of Kafka, Kant, Proust, Dostoevsky, Borges and Plath
Ghostly grandeur
The history of the magnificent Thames-side palace, with its outrageous shenanigans spanning five centuries, is vividly brought to life by Gareth Russell
Adventures in Greeneland
In skilfully told stories involving luck and changes of fortune, Osborne suggests that it’s not the hand you’re dealt that matters, but how you play it
From revolutionary Paris to the moon
Thirlwell’s protagonist Celine flees malicious gossip in revolutionary France to ponder on sisterly solidarity, patriarchal violence, motherhood, colonialism and slavery
A woman of some importance
Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s creative influence on her husband George Orwell has been ignored for far too long, says Marina Benjamin
Arts
Modest fun: Red, White & Royal Blue reviewed
Red, White & Royal Blue is a rom-com based on the LGBT bestselling novel by Casey McQuiston. Nope, me neither,…
Dazzled by her gift
If you have never seen Bernadette Robinson give yourself a treat and see her current one man show, Divas. It’s…
50 not out
In 2015 Carlos Acosta announced his retirement from the Royal Ballet and the classical repertory. It seemed like the right…
Comedy gold
A chilly August in Edinburgh. Colder than it’s been for 20 years and the city looks scruffier than ever. Locked…
Losing the plot
The Reunion opened in 1997 with some young people being carefree: a fact they obligingly signalled by zipping around the…
Come let us adore them
It’s not just who our pop heroes are that marks the passing of the generations; it’s how those heroes present…
Fibre optics
Trophy office blocks designed as landmarks are not welcoming to humans; their glass and steel reception areas feel more suited…
Hanging offences
Calvin Po laments the pious distortions of history at two of Britain’s best-known galleries
Life
Aussie life
‘Senior moment’, being an affectionate descriptor for the kind of harmless temporary memory failure which presages more serious cognitive decline,…
Language
The Albanese government has established a ‘Makarrata Commission’ with a budget of $5.8 million dollars. So, what is this word…
Chamber music
In Competition No. 3311, you were invited to submit a song suitable for inclusion in a parliamentary songbook. In an…
Port sunset
I once drank some excellent port at Ted Heath’s table. The invitation came as a surprise, but it almost certainly…
Megan Rapinoe’s comeuppance
I’m loath to write about the current Fifa World Cup because criticising women’s football is textbook ‘misogyny’ – at least,…
Stop HS2 – I want to get off
I have two suggestions for HS2. Either stop it or make it stop. The spiralling cost and delays are reason enough…











































































