The Spectator
13 September 2025 Aus
Impropaganda
Australia
Impropaganda
This week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged $100 million of hard-earned Australian taxpayer money to ‘establish a new Pacific Resilience…
Travel notes
I am writing this in the bar of a cheap hotel. As I type, I notice a man running down…
Australian Features
The emperor penguin has plenty of clothes
The real threat is ignorance, not climate
The climate: catastrophism v. common sense
Science fights back, but is anybody listening?
Features
Fragile China: who’s really in charge?
Xi Jinping effectively vanished in July and the first half of August. Some China watchers speculated that his unexplained absence…
Save our sausages!
Who first thought of grinding up all those little unused odds and sods from an animal carcass and stuffing them…
Will assisted dying become a cover for abuse?
Every year, thousands of stories of abuse pour into Compassion in Care, a charity that supports whistleblowers in the care…
The myth of the outsider
The job of radio critic for the Tablet offers several perquisites. One of them is access to the BBC previews…
Winston, Windsor and ‘private time’: inside Trump’s state visit
The first time Donald Trump was on an official visit to the UK, in July 2018, he was deep in…
Julie Burchill, remembered
When I was told that a newspaper had asked someone to write my obituary, my first instinct was excitement. I’m…
The comeback of George III
We no longer correct ourselves as we sing the first line of the national anthem. ‘Prince of Wales’ no longer…
The wild world of the ‘Ozempic safari’
Safari log: 3.56 p.m. and the Land Rover is parked up on the savannah. Inside, we wear dark glasses and…
Autism isn’t a ‘superpower’
A very warm welcome for Margaret Thatcher inside autism’s ever-growing tent – if she can find space to wield her…
Mandelson’s Epstein problem is not going away
When King Charles hosts Donald Trump for the state banquet at Windsor Castle next week, the dignitaries should know better…
The Week
Why I gave up on the Tories
The days between my leaving the Tories and joining Reform were an odd uneven time. It was the hardest decision…
Portrait of the week: Angela Rayner resigns, Poland downs Russian drones and Israel bombs Qatar
Home The government shuddered when Angela Rayner resigned as housing secretary, deputy prime minister and deputy leader of the Labour…
Starmer’s survival depends on going against his instincts
Athelstan has long faded from public imagination, despite being the king who, in 927 ad, first united England. But thanks…
Angela Rayner and the ancient question of ‘good judgment’
Angela Rayner has returned to the back benches because, as housing secretary, she failed to follow the rules relating to…
Letters: White working-class pupils have been forgotten
In the way of justice Sir: Robert Jenrick is right to suggest that, as well as leaving the European Convention…
Columnists
The Pret plunge isn’t quite what it seems
Gold goes on up: having risen by an unprecedented 40 per cent in a year to pass $3,600 (or £2,675)…
Reform’s success is far from set in stone
The current ‘Britain is on a knife edge’ mood is understandable. Our discontents are great and Sir Keir Starmer’s government…
The return of Keir vs Andy
When Labour MPs met to hear from their leader on Monday, there was one group who felt particularly aggrieved. In…
How to raise a patriot
‘Good news for patriots,’ said one of our most celebrated national newspapers this week: ‘Your numbers are likely to swell.’…
Beware the restless, shifty liars
I have only been to Alexandria once, some years ago, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power, but it struck…
The misplaced sympathy for Angela Rayner
One evening last week I came home, flipped on the TV and saw on the news what must surely be…
Books
A simple life fraught with difficulties: Ruth, by Kate Riley, reviewed
The eponymous protagonist struggles against the strictures of her Anabaptist upbringing whereby women cook, clean and police each other’s morals
Exploring the enchanted gardens of literature
Sandra Lawrence transports us to the gnarled yews of Tom’s Midnight Garden, the scent of azaleas at Manderley and the Pillow Book’s chrysanthemums glistening with dew
The joyless rants of Andrea Long Chu
The critic’s modishly provocative takedowns of successful contemporary writers, signed off with vapid aphorisms, make for dispiriting rather than stimulating reading
Sebastian Faulks looks back on youth and lost idealism
The novelist describes key moments in his life from boarding school onwards in essays originally intended to discuss ‘the things that have meant the most to me’
Courage and humour in the face of unimaginable grief
Miriam Toews meditates on suicide, silence and the messiness of survival as she attempts to answer the question: ‘Why Do I Write’?
Art and radicalism in 1930s Britain
Andy Friend describes the first decade of the AIA, a vital movement that blended art and politics in the fight against international fascism
Horoscopes and horror – the reign of Septimius Severus
Notoriously brutal and superstitious, Rome’s first African emperor was responsible for killing of his rivals on an unprecedented scale as well as genocide against the Scots
On the trail of a missing masterpiece: What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan, reviewed
In the archipelago-republic of 22nd-century Britain, a literary scholar becomes obsessed with a long-vanished sonnet sequence and the woman who inspired it
Ignorance, madness or folly – what exactly constitutes stupidity?
In a picturesque ramble through world civilisation, Stuart Jeffries proposes some answers
Alchemy – the ultimate fool’s errand
Secretive, expensive and doomed to failure, the business of turning base metal to gold nevertheless occupied scholars for centuries
Arts
Turning your brain to mush
The appointment of Dean Bryant as head of the Malthouse Theatre took some of us by surprise. He had just…
Lower your expectations for Spinal Tap II
This Is Spinal Tap is now such a deserved comedy behemoth that it’s easy to forget how gradual its ascent…
Netflix’s Hostage is an act of cultural aggression
Apart from hunting, one of the very few consolations of the end of summer is that telly stops being quite…
Shallow and silly: Born With Teeth, at Wyndham’s Theatre, reviewed
Born With Teeth is a camp two-hander starring a pair of TV luminaries, Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel, as Marlowe…
Both thin and overblown: Royal Ballet’s A Single Man reviewed
A common flaw in narrative ballet today is the attempt to tell stories that are too complex and ramified for…
The problem with Chappell Roan
There is a downside to being fast-tracked into the position of this season’s newest pop sensation, and it became more…
Britain’s loveliest, most thoughtful festival
The last weekend of August is my favourite of the year. That’s when I pootle down to Cranborne Chase to…
A gallery that refuses to dumb-down
The DNA of Dulwich Picture Gallery is aspirational, in the sincerest sense. Opening in 1817 when private collections were still…
‘Modern pop makes me want to kill myself’: Neil Hannon interviewed
Search for a successor to Tom Lehrer, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any decent candidates. One of the …
Life
Aussie life
The dictionary definition of a banana republic refers to a country that has an economy dependent solely on revenue from…
Language
Because of the alarming level of antisemitism that has grown like a poisonous fungus in Australia, a Speccie reader (Sandra)…
I doubt there’s a better ravioli in London: The Lavery reviewed
The Lavery in South Kensington is named for Sir John Lavery, official artist of the Great War and designer of…
Why three is the magic number in these Ashes
And so it begins, the Great Debate: no, not who will be deputy leader of the Labour party but the…
Dear Mary: Do I have to read the romantic novel my neighbour has based on me?
Q. A woman in our village has written a romantic novel in which one of the leading characters is said…
My favourite memory of Geoff Lewis
To be a great jockey takes character as well as ability and Geoff Lewis, whom we have lost at 89,…
The anarchy of a breakfast buffet
The Portuguese guest wanted an egg, but she didn’t want it to look like an egg. She came down to…
Is Angela Rayner ‘humble’?
Just before the earth opened up, Sir Keir Starmer said of his deputy: ‘Angela came from a very humble background,…
Nick Ferrari’s big fat Provençale wedding
It was the morning after the night before and I was picking glass out of my leg by a pool,…
How America could save free speech in Britain
The only holiday the Youngs had this summer was a week in Norfolk for the Hunstanton tennis tournament. I’m too…
Spectator Competition: Throuple
Comp. 3416 invited you to marry romantasy (the romance-fantasy fusion now dominating fiction sales) with a third genre. Narnia, gritty…













































































