The Spectator
13 February 2021 Aus
Australia
PM damages his brand
‘Free speech never created a single job,’ a sanctimonious Scott Morrison once informed the nation, forgetting of course that his…
Australian Features
Features Australia, New Zealand
New Zealand is being transformed, but not in a good way
Rampant identity politics are blighting the country
Saint Jacinda’s climate change lucky dip
Meaningless gestures and pointless programs galore in NZ
National socialism with Chinese characteristics
Beijing doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer
Beware of Geeks bearing gifts
Safe, effective treatments and vaccines are both desirable
The decline of Arts and Humanities
A massive ‘fail’ to our Anglosphere universities
Features
St Bartholomew the Great
There is only one place in the world that has played host to both the Virgin Mary and Benjamin Franklin,…
Author’s Notebook
In the middle of December, for reasons I’m coming to, I woke early in a posh hotel. I lay semi-dozing…
The Week
Rebuilding welfare
Amid the many failures of public policy during the Covid crisis, one success has gone largely unnoticed. The Universal Credit…
Portrait of the week
Home On Sunday 7 February, as the week began, 11,465,210 people in the United Kingdom had received a first vaccination…
Natural successor
When it comes to natural history, Sir David Attenborough rules the airwaves. Pliny the Elder (d. ad 79) who, as…
Columnists
A prison of our own making
Anyone who’s been through customs Down Under isn’t surprised by the region’s OTT response to Covid. Having been X-rayed before…
The Spectator’s Notes
‘Tencent Wykeham’ has a ring to it. It captures how easily British universities can be bought. It is the new…
Facts are history
Your quiz for the week is to make the connection between the following people: fun-loving Greek hack Homer, veteran US…
The Northern Ireland protocol problem
Ursula von der Leyen now admits that she overreacted in the EU’s vaccine row with the UK. She has spoken…
The sticky truth about Navalny
His courage is exhilarating. Even if you think his cause hopeless, Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Putin-baiter, deserves…
Rapid recovery means no negative rates – and a good time to buy a pub
It’s obvious from the body language of Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey that negative interest rates — much talked…
Books
Diabolical twists
This is not the age of experimental fiction — it’s Franzen’s, not Foster Wallace’s. That shift was on its cusp…
The great carve-up
At the end of the last century, Simon Winchester bought 123 acres of wooded mountainside in the hamlet of Wassaic,…
Yummy mummy
Seventh Seltzer is a nice family man, working as a publisher’s reader in New York, who happens to come from…
The curse of Cain
When police were called to a block of flats in north London at the beginning of 2002, they expected to…
Missing the big picture
In 1953, Francis Bacon’s friends Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood were concerned about the painter’s health. His liver was in…
Reinventing the superhero
If Marvel characters seem dysfunctional, just look at their creators, says Dorian Lynskey
Arts
Das Rheingold
You could hardly ask for a more exorbitant return to mainstage theatre than a production of the first part, the…
Robyn Nevin
The Adelaide Festival program describes her, accurately, as ‘our finest stage performer’. Robyn Nevin is appearing there (2 Feb-14 Mar)…
Perfect to fall asleep to
Good Grief is a new drama starring Sian Clifford who shot to fame as the older sister in Fleabag. The…
When music was more than a click away
In Teenage Superstars, a long and slightly exhausting documentary about the Scottish indie scene of the 1980s and ’90s, there…
From bad joke to 21st-century classic
Erich Korngold was what you might call an early adopter. As a child prodigy in Habsburg Vienna, he’d astonished the…
Joining the dots
‘History,’ wrote Edward Gibbon, ‘is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.’ In…
Trigger happy
In this line of business you receive many emails from PRs ‘reaching out’ about their particular film, which I really…
Cinema as car ad
It’s a premise with plenty of previous. Children whose parents were murdered by Indians on the frontier of the American…
Lost and found
These rediscovered drawings by Hokusai point to him as the father of photography and modern animation, says Laura Gascoigne
From Downton to Dudley
The Duchess of Rutland, Emma Manners (née Watkins), grew up on a farm in the Welsh Borders before becoming proprietress…
Life
Aussie Life
It’s likely that 2021 will see the last walkers freely ascend the summit of Mt Warning in northern New South…
Aussie Language
The word of the past decade (2011-2020) is ‘fake news.’ That, at least, is the opinion of the fine folk…
Titles of courtesy
I agree with Charles Moore (The Spectator, 6 February) that it is a shame the Times is dropping its use…
City limits
The phrase ‘rich people’s problems’ has its uses. I once overheard a group in a Knightsbridge restaurant sympathising with a…
Solution to 2490: Arrangement
Suggested by 30 (IKEBANA, or flower arranging), the unclued lights were all anagrams of flowers: 1A gardenia; 18 rose; 22…
Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder
The wine has been flowing in the Young household this week. The reason I’ve been celebrating is because I managed…
My palate and the plague
Later this week, on Spectator.co.uk, I will resolve a mystery that has featured in a lot of Zoom traffic around…
The state we’re in
In Competition No. 3185 you were invited to compose a sonnet called ‘England in 2021’. The challenge was inspired by…
2493: Opposites
Two contrasting film stars allegedly said ‘1A’ (five words) and ‘49/27’ (six words in total). Remaining unclued lights (including one…
Puzzle No. 640
White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Theodore Herlin, Schachzeitung 1852. Answers to be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk…
Knights before bishops
In 2005 Steve Jobs gave a commencement address at Stanford University. The late Apple CEO kicked off with a story…
