The Spectator
14 March 2015 Aus
The end of childhood
When the state excuses underage sex, what chance do our children have?
Australia
Lynch mob-ette
There is a disturbing current of vilification running throughout the Australian feminist movement. Even as Australians proudly celebrated International Women’s…
Australian Columnists
Australian notes
In taking action for defamation Treasurer Joe Hockey is breaking a great Parliamentary convention, according to Mark Latham. He was…
Diary
After I fell off my chair again, it was time to get ready for the launch of the Intergenerational Report…
Australian Features
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
The Intergenerational Report offers the government a glimpse into their (and our) future
Lynched by the feminist mob
Despite being a pin-up boy for the White Ribbon movement, I made the mistake of attempting to explain male violence
Yearning to be connected
The art of Shane Cotton draws on his Maori and European roots
Features
The end of childhood
For a society obsessed with paedophilia, we're disturbingly comfortable with sexualising childhood
Healthy ambition
The shadow health secretary on NHS scandals, Hillsborough and his party's leadership
Restorative justice
Civilised people balance the short-term interest of one generation against the values enshrined in the past, and the right of future generations to share that past
Feeling the benefit
When my Employment Support Allowance was stopped, I was angry and upset. But looking back, it was a turning point in my life
Novel distractions
Procrastination used to be an honest business – cleaning the bath, putting CDs back in their cases. Now we have Google
Michael Gove’s secret fan club
Yes, he’s unpopular – except with the people who can see the results
Jawaab explained
It is not easy to be young, British and Muslim. Since the atrocities of 9/11 and 7/7, the media has…
The Week
State of the arts
If state schools are being pushed away from the arts, how did 76,000 of their pupils end up taking drama GCSE last year?
Portrait of the week
Home Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said that ‘a huge burden of responsibility’ lay with those who acted as apologists…
Greeks vs Greens
Environmentalists such as Theophrastus and Plato were well ahead of them
Officers’ off hours
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 13 March 1915: We are glad to note that officers in uniform have been…
Australian letters
Praise indeed Sir: Congratulations on the best arguments, articles and editorial I have personally witnessed so far in the history…
Columnists
I don’t want anyone telling me how to raise my monsters
And if as a result they have a sick sense of humour and a seething contempt for authority, then all well and good
It’s dark days for dogs and their owners
Banned from parks, banned from beaches, and now poisoned at Crufts. It seems like Britain has stopped loving dogs
Exit, pursued by a bear
In this election campaign, no one wants to mention the bear in the room
Something useful for your Budget, George: fast-track approval for challenger banks
Plus: Why Rona Fairhead should leave HSBC (but stay at the Beeb); and a charming alternative to automation at Bond Street station
Books
An empire within an empire
William Dalrymple’s review of The Tears of the Rajas by Ferdinand Mount reminds us that the British empire was erected on the dead bodies of hundreds of thousands of its Indian subjects
Women take wing
A review of Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes by Virginia Nicholson reveals that it wasn’t just men blocking female emancipation: women themselves were equally to blame
A lone Crusader declares holy war
A review of One of Us by Åsne Seierstad reveals a lonely misfit set on a murderous mission to purify the Nordic race
Shades of the prison house
Reviewing the Ancient Art of Growing Old by Tom Payne, Richard Ingrams remembers sweating blood at school translating the smug, self-satisfied Cicero
Good old bad old days
A review of Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn celebrates London’s gay 1930s society where much is shrouded in secrecy
A choice of first novels
Keith Miller is impressed by the latest first novels - but deplores the way publishers oversell them
Rescuing the past from the teeth of time
A review of Ruth Scurr’s biography of John Aubrey tells how the distinguished scholar and antiquarian, friend of Pepys and Hobbes, died in penury and was buried in an unmarked grave
Majesty of the malls
Nicky Haslam admires the thoroughly extraordinary Mary Portas, monarch of the malls
Decidedly fishy
Fish become humans, humans fish in the fairy-tale world of David Vann’s poetic novel, Aquarium
Tales to tell
The short story has long been a staple of Australian literature but has had something of a rough ride in…
Arts
Shock and awe
As the current V&A exhibition, Savage Beauty, should show, the British bad boy of fashion really did have imagination and vision
The power of nightmares
Plus: a Serpentine Gallery survey of Leon Golub’s large scale compositions on the atrocities of war that are occasionally memorable but often show a lack of skill
Brought to book
The end is so sentimental and so Hollywood you'd be far better off reading the original Irène Némirovsky novel
Suite nothings
Plus: a new Mugabe drama at the Gate Theatre that, amazingly, doesn’t offer a single piece of data about the play’s subject
Passage to India
Plus: after a month away without radio, Kate Chisholm didn’t expect to hear that half of Ambridge had been destroyed
The Turner effect
Plus: BBC2’s new sitcom, Nurse, suggests that Paul Whitehouse is a bit of a genius
Culture buff
Nowadays we don’t often look to modern Greece for inspiration except for its physical beauty and the charm of its…
Life
Bright blues
The boat race for the brain, as it has become known, took place at the Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall,…
No. 353
Black to play. This is from James-Sugden, -Cambridge 1972, as featured last week. It’s a win by the Cambridge player…
Acrostic
In Competition No. 2888 you were invited to submit a poem in the style of a well-known poet, the first…
2202: Problem XI
Seven unclued lights (one hyphened) are 23: 7A + 17 + 40 + 5 + 6 + 31 = 36.…
To 2199: TV Comedy
The unclued lights can be arranged to give: ‘I decided to sell my Hoover … well, it was just collecting…
Your problems solved
Plus: An avocado dessert recipe and another way of seeing off handsy hosts






























































