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The Spectator

13 March 2021 Aus

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Race card

Although much has been written about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey (perhaps Jerry Springer would…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Where populism ain’t so popular

Our elites fail to understand that the problem is them

Features Australia

A torn and tattered patchwork quilt

The US presidential election system is not fit for purpose

Features Australia

Josh with the dosh

Celebrating GDP growth is a nonsense

Features Australia

Tribulations of a woke princess

Nobody knows the troubles she’s seen

Features Australia

The measure of a man

Sadly, we now know where Scott Morrison stands

Features Australia

Sacred sites – a warning to us all

We are being misled about indigenous history

Features Australia

Porter witch-hunt is the last straw

The ABC must be reformed - here’s how

Features

Notes on...

Egrets

There’s an unwritten rule in newspaper journalism that any story about egrets must have one of two headlines. Either ‘no…

Notebook

Letter from Japan

 Tokyo This week was the tenth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in…

Features

Press gang

The dangers of televising lobby briefings

Features

Mean girls

The return of the bitch is long overdue

Features

Stranger than fiction

How I’d write Covid: The Thriller

Features

Poles apart

Why the Polish community doesn’t want the vaccine

Features

Infernal censorship

How Dante fell foul of the Chinese Communist party

Features

In the mix

Why is it racist to wonder what skin colour your child will have?

Features

In defence of Meghan

The unfair demonisation of a duchess

Features

Telling tales

Harry and Meghan’s brand of revenge

The Week

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week

Home The world was agog, some in tears, some in synchronised toe-curling, as the Duchess of Sussex and her husband…

Diary

Diary

Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…

Leading article

Touching distance

Since the start of this year, cases of Covid-19 have been in decline. Hospital admissions have fallen 80 per cent…

Letters

Letters

Spinning plates Sir: Kate Andrews is right to highlight the looming risk of inflation (‘Rishi’s nightmare’, 6 March), but to…

Barometer

Barometer

Good for the goose The government indicated that it will ban foie gras, out of animal welfare concerns. While it…

Ancient and modern

Salmond’s revenge

Ancient Greeks were not slow to express their enthusiasm for taking revenge. Observing the recent proceedings in the Scottish parliament,…

Columnists

Columns

The West has lost its moral high ground

International travellers running the gauntlet of English airports must already test negative for Covid before the flight, and on return…

Any other business

Spacs and the City: if London won’t, Amsterdam will

This column generally takes a sceptical view of financial novelties and gimmicks. So my antennae have twitched in recent days…

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

I have been slow in the uptake. When I saw the Duchess of Sussex complain in her interview clips about…

Columns

To the moon – and back

I have just applied to fly around the moon. My chances of being selected are slim, but is it impossible?…

Columns

There’s no ‘my’ in truth

Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of the former mayor of New York, Rudy, has been talking to the press about…

Columns

The shifting sands of Scotland

Every politician likes to say that they don’t pay attention to opinion polls. In my experience, this is almost universally…

Books

More from Books

The real rogue traders

When we think of those lurching moments last spring when it became clear that much of the world, not just…

More from Books

Bright and beautiful

Edward St Aubyn’s ‘Patrick Melrose’ novels were loosely autobiographical renderings of the author’s harrowing, rarefied, drug-sozzled existence. Despite their subject…

More from Books

Truckload of trouble

A father and his estranged 20-year-old daughter set off across France, sharing the driver’s cabin of a long-haul truck. This…

More from Books

Dinners through the dynasties

A truth that ought to be universally acknowledged is that Chinese food, while much loved, is underappreciated. China certainly has…

More from Books

Wind, sea and sky

Bird migration was once one of those unassailable mysteries that had baffled humankind since Aristotle. A strange hypothesis, genuinely advanced…

More from Books

An oddly matched pair

On a shard of paper, some time in the bleak mid-1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald incorporated a favourite line from one…

More from Books

On the game

For a novel set partly in a Soho brothel, Hot Stew is an oddly bloodless affair. Tawdry characters drift in…

More from Books

Deepest, darkest Peru

As the planet gets more and more ravaged, the mind can begin to glaze over at the cumulative general statistics…

Lead book review

Crying in the wilderness

Even Edward Said would not have claimed to be ‘the 20th century’s most celebrated intellectual’. But neither was he ‘Professor of Terror’, says Justin Marozzi

Arts

Australian Arts

Britney Spears

The arts world in general —and with it theatre in particular— is opening up. Not only is the Botticelli to…

Culture Buff

Johannes Fritzsch

It is hard to imagine a city with a richer cultural history than Dresden or a better place for a…

Pop

Bands on the run

Twitter was awash with mockery last week, after Adam Levine, the singer of the American group Maroon 5, was interviewed…

Theatre

Initial impressions

The Finborough’s new show is a love story with the male partner absent. Two women, one Irish and one American,…

Television

Double act

Well, this a bit awkward. A fortnight ago, in my last TV column, I confidently asserted that, despite the involvement…

Arts feature

‘His paintings are perfectly meant for our times’

Musa Mayer talks to Hermione Eyre about her father Philip Guston’s cancellation and her fear that he will for ever be known as the artist who painted the Ku Klux Klan

Classical

Alive and kicking

Rachmaninov’s First Symphony begins with a snarl, and gets angrier. A menacing skirl from the woodwinds, a triple-fortissimo blast from…

More from Arts

Twitter, but with actual screaming

For my 13th birthday in 1995 I requested — and got — my own ‘line’. This meant that I could…

Radio

Barack and the Boss

Barack Obama wants the world to know how much he loves singing. In his new podcast, which takes the form…

Film

Thriller instinct

Judas and the Black Messiah is a biopic about Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, but it’s not your regular biopic…

Life

Aussie Life, New Zealand

Kiwi Life

Although it probably won’t, the recent kerfuffle over the brilliant works of Dr Seuss and other creators of children’s books…

Aussie Life

Language

Is it just me, or have others noticed that heterosexual couples have lost access to the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’?…

Chess puzzle

Puzzle no. 644

White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Philip Hamilton Williams, Birmingham Post, 1890. Answers should be emailed…

Drink

We’ll always have Paris

Some friends claim to be making marks on the wall to count the days until liberation. Ah, the forgotten delights…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary

Q. I hesitate to bring you this problem, but I suspect it is not that uncommon. Early in our very…

The Wiki Man

Cross purposes

I was once asked by a previous editor of the Timeshow to increase sales of the paper. I was slightly…

Mind your language

Formica

If I ever again accompany my husband to a medical conference in Spain, and want to tell my hosts that…

Real life

Real life

‘Have you had your jab, Margery?’ said one Surrey lady to another in the queue for take-away coffee at the…

No sacred cows

How I learned to love audio books

According to a charity called Fight For Sight, 38 per cent of people who’ve been using screens more during lockdown…

Low life

Low life

Around the time that poor M. Macron was casting televised aspersions on the AstraZeneca jab, I was offered one by…

Wild life

Wild life

Laikipia In one of Kenya farmer Karen Blixen’s short stories, a character says: ‘I know of a cure for everything:…

Crossword

2497: Scramble

Six unclued lights (three of two words) are of a kind, associated with the 16’s 11s, and overseen by 28.…

Chess

Armenian champions

In the 21st century, which country has won more international chess Olympiads than any other? Russia? USA? China? None of…

High life

High life

Gstaad I was very sad to read of Rupert Hambro’s death. I didn’t know him well, but first met him…

Crossword solution

to 2494: Back to front

Unclued lights are from the ‘Looking Glass’ poem Jabberwocky. First prize Alison Peck, Mathry, PembrokeshireRunners-up Patricia Gibbs, Barrow upon Soar,…

Competition

Heaven scent

In Competition No. 3189 you were invited to submit a poem about a favourite smell. This challenge certainly seemed to…

Bridge

Bridge

One benefit of lockdown is that there is much more time for reading. My personal favourite bridge book is Play…