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The Spectator

15 November 2025 Aus

How to fix the BBC

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Cop that!

As Cop 30 grinds to a lamentable end, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon will return to their previous lives…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Climate stupidity peaks

The Keanster is in a world of trouble

Features Australia

Big Teal vs Big Denier

‘Renewables are cheaper’ slogan has gone with the wind

Features Australia

Last piece on an empty chessboard

Liberals repeating the UAP’s fatal mistake

Features Australia

Business/Robbery, etc

The serious threat from China’s minerals processing dominance

Features Australia

‘Blood and honour’ or ‘Mud on Donna’?

Let’s check with the NSW Police acoustics experts

Features Australia

The Kiwi diaspora

Disappointed and disillusioned New Zealanders are fleeing to Australia

Features

Features

What Andrew’s Norfolk exile will look like

When Russian dissidents were bundled off into exile under the tsars, they were sent to Siberia, the ‘prison without a…

Features

The rise of the on-the-day party drop-out

A new drinks-party-shirking method has taken hold in British society. I call it ‘Lastminute.non’. Previously, the way of not going…

Features

The army is too woke for war

Last month, in a two-page letter to colonels of corps and regiments, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General…

Features

America thinks Britain is finished

‘What’s missing?’ the tech titan Peter Thiel asks me, over lunch on the hummingbird-infested patio of his house in the…

Features

How to fix the BBC

Assuming the BBC is still in existence by the time you read this, the scale of the task facing the…

Features

Revealed: the bias of the BBC News app

The most influential person in British media is not Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere – it’s the editor who pushes…

Features

How to get Britain eating healthily again

Another week, another government offensive against childhood obesity. This time it’s a fresh round of pleas for new levies on…

Notes on...

How Browns lost the battle of the brasseries

Last month, the founder of the Browns restaurant chain was charged with killing his mother. Shocking news, but it feels…

Features

Britain’s cities are descending into a San Francisco-style nightmare

One morning a few months ago I was walking past St James’s Park station when a dishevelled man with his…

The Week

Ancient and modern

The golden thread between Donald Trump and Nero

Donald Trump has knocked down the east wing of the White House and is turning it into his Golden Ballroom.…

Diary

Ireland is looking for its own Nigel Farage

A few years ago, I watched an Irish-made drama on Netflix called Rebellion. Given that it was about the 1916…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: BBC vs Trump, a plot against Starmer and a weight loss deadline for North Sea oil workers

Home Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, resigned, as did Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News. Samir Shah,…

Leading article

Labour isn’t working

Labour: the clue should be in the name. In March, Keir Starmer branded Labour the ‘party of work’. If ‘you…

Letters

Letters: The case for decriminalising cannabis

Back to reality Sir: The harms caused by cannabis are not a result of a failure to police it properly…

Columnists

Columns

Sydney Sweeney, the Hollywood radical

Every time you feel down about Britain’s out-of-touch elites, a look across the Atlantic is a reassuring reminder that it…

Columns

Justice in war is messy

At the end of last month, a judge in Belfast issued a verdict that was both right and wrong. The…

Columns

Inside the Wes Streeting plot

Keir Starmer is stuck in a catch-22. If he is to avoid the threat of continual leadership challenges, the Prime…

The Spectator's Notes

The true cost of the Chagos deal

When the BBC denies ‘systemic bias’, it denies the main, the crucial thing exposed by Michael Prescott’s now-famous leaked internal…

Columns

The UK’s tax take, take, take

Helping her country ski ever more steeply down the wrong side of the Laffer curve, Rachel Reeves may be preparing…

Any other business

This time it’s crypto: now the Bank of England bows to Trump

The softening of the Bank of England’s stance on ‘stablecoins’ looks like another tugging of the British forelock towards the…

Books

Lead book review

What do Oscar Wilde, Gwen John and Evelyn Waugh have in common?

They converted to Catholicism in the past century and are among 12 notable ‘defectors to Rome’ examined by Melanie McDonagh

More from Books

Escape from investment banking to the open road – a biking odyssey

Miles Morland notches up 50,000 miles on his BMW 1000 with trips through Europe, Argentina, Japan, Australia and the United States – without a single accident

More from Books

A satirical portrait of village life: Love Divine, by Ysenda Maxtone Graham, reviewed

Within a bourgeois Church of England milieu of round-robins and parish chit-chat lurk rumours of sabotage and clandestine love affairs

More from Books

The inspiration for David Lynch’s mysterious, disquieting world

A bizarre experience in the filmmaker’s adolescence involving a woman’s escape from domestic violence seems to have left an indelible mark

More from Books

What hope is there for Syria today?

After two brutal regimes and a devastating civil war, there’s fear of renewed corruption under President Ahmed al Sharaa, a former al Qaeda terrorist

More from Books

From the wilds of Kyrgyzstan to the Victorian nursery – a choice of art books

Subjects include ancient rock carvings, portraiture, images of lost London and the illustrations of Walter Crane

More from Books

Laughing at Putin is a powerful form of protest

A constant round of fines, surveillance and detention is alleviated by jokes, mischief and a joyous love affair for Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina

More from Books

Philosophy’s greatest pessimist wasn’t so miserable after all

Arthur Schopenhauer’s luminous prose, savage wit and commitment to thinking for oneself make reading him an exhilarating, even life-affirming experience

Arts

Australian Arts

Equal to any quirk

Richo is dead. The supreme fixer of the Labor party is gone. That wise and moderate man Brian Johns who…

Pop

The rise of psychedelia

On YouTube – and I urge you to look it up – there is a magnificent piece of footage from…

Theatre

This Othello is almost flawless

Othello directed by Tom Morris opens with a stately display of scarlet costumes and gilded doorways arranged against a backdrop…

Radio

Was Queen Victoria’s doctor the first psychoanalyst?

Queen Victoria began to experience dark visions after giving birth to her second child. Concerned that she might have inherited…

Cinema

Mrs Göring is far too sympathetic: Nuremberg reviewed

Nuremberg is one of those films that falls short on everything it wants to be and everything it could be.…

Opera

In defence of Katie Mitchell

Janacek’s The Makropulos Case is a weird and very wonderful opera, but its basic plot isn’t hard to follow. Still,…

Exhibitions

This exhibition made my companion gasp

Numerous research academics have contributed to this highly cogent show celebrating the craftspeople of Ancient Egypt. My pre-teen companion, though…

Arts feature

Labour’s war on heritage

Britain’s heritage is slowly going up in smoke. Medlock Mill was Manchester’s oldest standing textile mill until it burnt down…

Television

Bleak but gripping: Channel 4’s Trespasses reviewed

Yeats famously summarised Ireland in the four words, ‘Great hatred, little room’. But, as Louise Kennedy’s 2022 debut novel Trespasses…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

‘Celebrate Spring in Nature’, is the call to action on the Parks Victoria website, which urges us to visit the…

Aussie Life

Language

Over the past few weeks I have been collecting media clichés – those empty, meaningless, padding words that have turned…

No sacred cows

The persecution of our local politicians

Have a thought for Darren Grimes, the 32-year-old Reform councillor. Since becoming deputy leader of Durham County Council in May,…

The Wiki Man

Why don’t we order houses from a catalogue?

One possible solution to the housing crisis is to convene a group of experts in property, housebuilding, planning and local…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: Can I retract a party invitation without causing offence?

Q. A very likeable woman has joined the company I work for and also just moved to my village. I…

Mind your language

How binding are Rachel Reeves’s ‘pledges’?

‘Pop goes the weasel!’ my husband exclaimed, expertly muddying the waters. We had just been listening to another news bulletin…

Drink

Wine to toast the fallen

Solemn, moving, serious: British. As silence fell and the wreaths were lain, even teenagers joined in the mood of reverence.…

Still Life

The day Tilda Swinton came to stay

An exhibition at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam devoted to the multi-talented and award-winning actress Tilda Swinton, runs until…

Real life

The last B&B guests of the season

‘Where are you off to now?’ I asked the fellow from Hong Kong as he and his wife stood in…

Competition

Spectator Competition: A letter from Jane

Competition 3425 was prompted by Gill Hornby, a biographer of Jane Austen, telling an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival…

More from life

How to make the perfect pecan pie

A pecan pie has been on my kitchen table for the past few days, due to circumstances rendering every other…

Bridge

Susanna Gross (1967-2025)

Michael Gove writes: The Spectator asks only one thing of its writers: that they entertain. Susanna Gross, who wrote our…