The Spectator
14 August 2021 Aus
Zero-sum game
Why the government won’t talk about the real costs of decarbonisation
Australia
Mandy & the IPCC
Floods, hurricanes, disaster, disease, drought, rising sea levels: you name it, it’s all there in the latest doom-laden tome from…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
The Commonwealth government is at it again, doling out money for a fashionable cause and without any need being demonstrated,…
Latham’s law
Rupert, keep an eye on your bunny rabbit Obsessiveness is one of the most fascinating and under-reported aspects of human…
Australian Features
The National Cabinet is a disaster
The PM has created a presidential role for himself
Features
Letter from America
There are many in Donald Trump’s inner circle who have tried to read his mind these past four years, together…
Avocets
There are many reasons why birds disappear — and why they return. The avocet, however, is probably the only one…
The Week
Barking up the right tree
The government’s promise to fund a pilot scheme promoting the teaching of Latin in secondary schools is music to the…
Portrait of the Week
Home With less frightening domestic data on the coronavirus pandemic to ponder, subjects such as the rivalry between Boris Johnson,…
Office politics
After seizing so much power during the pandemic, Boris Johnson’s government is having trouble working out where its remit now…
Columnists
The Spectator’s Notes
The tale of A-levels shows how ministers can sometimes find themselves in a position when it is simply too dangerous…
Why vaccine passports are pointless
Despite having mocked app-happy Albion in my last column, I finally downloaded the NHS app. (Lest I seem a raging…
Down the rabbit hole
The literary sensation of the season is apparently a book called The Constant Rabbit, by Jasper Fforde. In brief, a…
Talking to a brick wall at the National Trust
Press officers, breathe easy. This is not another column attacking the National Trust. Actually, I tell a lie. It is.…
How to burst the grade inflation bubble
The Tories regard a return to rigorously marked exams as one of their big achievements in education. In 2010, the…
The bottleneck in shipping will deliver an expensive Christmas
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey looks increasingly uncomfortable as inflation notches upwards from ‘nothing to worry about’ towards the…
Books
Hooray for Hollywood
Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood – and hates it.…
Man of many parts
This is an ingenious and infuriating book about an ingenious and infuriating writer. I first encountered Fernando Pessoa in the…
Unwelcome news
A character in David Hare’s Skylight claims she has at last found contentment by no longer opening newspapers or watching…
Bellicose but comradely
One of the first retrospective accounts of Oliver Cromwell’s early career, Andrew Marvell’s ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from…
The end of the ride
Audi will make no more fuel engines after 2035. So that’s the end of the Age of Combustion, signalled by…
The roots of conflict
The Island of Missing Trees feels like a strange title until you realise how hard Elif Shafak makes trees work…
Stories within stories within stories
Near to the heart of this wild and labyrinthine novel — on page 516 of 808 — a character in…
A character assassination too far
Revisionist biographies of Churchill are nothing new but this one lays the hostility and contempt on with a trowel, says Andrew Roberts
Nordics and Nazis
Social historians of the future may look back at the reading habits of this era and conclude that we were…
The man and the brand
‘The story that Jay Parini recounts in Borges and Me is untrue,’ a recent letter in the TLS claimed, ‘and…
A bittersweet tale
Can you imagine if, in the 20th century, wine producers in France had switched from a product made (almost) entirely…
Dracula was only the start
The title of the journalist Paul Kenyon’s second book on crazy leadership, Children of the Night, leaves the reader in…
Dead gain
Musicians cast a long cultural shadow. Politicians may wield considerable power in their time, but although today’s young people are…
Arts
Aden Young
No one has any guarantee of seeing Sigrid Thornton in Lifespan of a Fact with the Sydney Theatre Company now…
Top of the chocs
Last Sunday on Channel 4, a man called Eric Nicoli proudly remembered ‘the bravest thing I’ve ever done’. In November…
Still life
Lloyd Evans finds the newly returned Edinburgh Fringe quieter, more low-key — and all the better for it
Frankly terrific
Sinatra: Raw (Pleasance, until 15 August) takes us inside the mind of the 20th century’s greatest crooner. The performer, Richard…
Billie Eilish: Happier Than Ever
Grade: C+ Time to get the razor out again — Billie’s back. The slurred and affected can’t-be-arsed-to-get-out-of-bed vocals. The relentless,…
Secrets and spies
The Courier is a Cold War spy thriller and the prospect of a Cold War spy thriller always makes my…
Fit for a king
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
The trying game
On sketch shows, the wisdom once was that you needed a punchline. That is, a slightly hammy, summative sign-off to…
Life
Aussie Life
At time of writing, Australia is sixth on the Tokyo medal ladder and with only one day of competition left…
Aussie Language
In December the various dictionaries will announce their choice for the Word of the Year title. For a while I…
My marital own goal
The fighting started just as Caroline turned right on to the Uxbridge Road after emerging from QPR’s stadium on Loftus…
To the gentlemen of Verona
There was a marvellous general of yesteryear called George Burns. He had a good war and a splendid peace. He…
A cocktail of errors
I often argue that, in theory at least, well-made cocktails are indisputably better than wines costing 20 times more. My…
Actor
‘That chap in Line of Duty. That’s what I’d call a bad actor,’ said my husband with vague certainty. He…
Sing a song of Covid
In Competition No. 3211 you were invited to submit a nursery rhyme inspired by the pandemic. When I set this…
2519: Not so up-to-date
One clued solution can precede each unclued light (four of two words and one of three), all to be found…
Solution to 2516: Such childish vocabulary
The unclued lights are the nouns from the opening sentence of The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter. TAFFETA was…
Puzzle No. 666
White to play. Abdusattorov–Durarbayli, Sochi 2021. The endgame looks tricky, but White found a way to force a quick mate.…
Calculated risks
Two years ago, the brilliant young Polish player Jan-Krzysztof Duda made a baffling decision. In the second game of his…











































































