The Spectator
17 November 2018 Aus
Very public health
Australia
Don’t sign
If, as seems to be reliably reported, the Morrison government has decided both to sign up next month to the…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
There was something ritualistic about the latest terrorist outrage in Melbourne. True, it was hideous from the moment that Hassan…
Conservative notes
Why don’t the Libs fight to win? Imagine that in getting your public affairs news you were restricted to the…
Remembrance notes
Exactly a year ago I was on my way home starting the final stage of recovery from prolonged surgery. Indeed…
Submarine notes
A working sub fleet and crew tomorrow, for 1/2 the price Now we have a new PM, he should look…
Australian Features
Very public health
I’ve known health minister Greg Hunt for over twenty years. When he is convinced about something he doesn’t hold back…
No guilt, no apology
Convicted of murder, Derek Bromley can teach us all a lesson about saying sorry when we are not guilty. And…
Business/Robbery etc
Beware of lawyers making recommendations about regulating the business community; they will inevitably lead to more business – for lawyers.…
Sisters aren’t doing it for themselves
Every era has its noble lies – the ideas that underpin a civilisation. The noble lie of contemporary culture is…
Features
In China’s new surveillance state, everyone will be watched, reviewed and rated
The bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai is the fastest in the world. It takes just over four hours to…
Social credit is just one part of China’s new state control
Chairman Mao talked of ‘three magic weapons’ for seizing power: the united front, the armed struggle and construction of the…
My one-night stand-up hell
At 8.45 p.m. I was back in the toilets again feeling pure terror. In front of me was a narrow…
How BlackRock became a sanctuary for clean-cut bankers and dormant politicians
A few months ago, an aggressive US pressure group called the Campaign for Accountability declared that it had a new…
The Ivy League’s dirty secret
New York There comes a point in a New York expat’s life when you suddenly realise that the liberal elites…
When does a murderer become a madman?
There was no reason for Edward Drummond to believe this January day was going to be different to any other…
The Roman road that came to define Britain
All roads lead to Rome, the saying goes. Well, all roads except for the Roman road of Watling Street, which…
The Week
It’s a bad deal – whichever way you look at it
During last year’s general election campaign, Theresa May declared that ‘You can only deliver Brexit if you believe in Brexit’.…
Portrait of the week: Moment of truth for Theresa May’s Brexit deal
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, defended a 500-page technical draft of the agreement on withdrawal from the European Union.…
Jo Johnson: My Brexit resignation was a revolutionary act
Jacob Rees-Mogg observed that my resignation last week was ‘the “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment in the Brexit process’. If this…
Have wildfires really got worse over the years?
Hard bitten A British tourist died after contracting rabies from a cat bite in Morocco. Whatever happened to the prominent…
Trial and punishment
From ‘The Kaiser’, 16 November 1918: What is to be done with the Kaiser? For the question must certainly be…
Call the polis
If Brussels is willing to offer the British Parliament only a dog’s Brexit, that should tell Parliament everything it needs…
Letters: Art is as important as history in the remembrance of the past
Hearts as well as heads Sir: Simon Jenkins suggests we should stop remembering and start forgetting about the first world…
Columnists
If Corbyn’s PM, expect him to wear a white poppy and Frida Kahlo T-shirt
‘It’s time for Bond — Basildon Bond,’ is the joke among pro-Leave MPs as Theresa May serves up her mess…
The maths probably won’t work for May, however hard she tries
The bad news for Theresa May is that Brexit isn’t over. She might have agreed terms with the European Commission…
The elites will never let us peasants fully revolt
Peasants’ Revolts tend not to work out too well in this country, for the peasants. I suppose that is why…
Why I won’t be turning Catholic just yet
I didn’t get an audience with the Pope when I visited Rome last weekend. But given that he’s a borderline…
Anyone seen Jeff Bezos? I’m here to talk to him about tax
Los Angeles/Seattle US stocks briefly rallied after the midterm results as markets looked favourably on a divided Congress and the…
Books
Books of the year – part two
Daniel Swift I feel as though I came late to the Sarah Moss party. Nobody told me she was this…
Saul Bellow: love the work, if not the man
Boxing writers sometimes try to make comparisons across weight groups. They used to say, for example, that Floyd Mayweather was…
Does an autobiographical novel really count as fiction?
Orhan Pamuk, writing about Vladimir Nabokov’s masterful memoir Speak, Memory, noted that there was a particular ‘thrill’ for the writer…
The Lion of the Punjab: the short, brutish career of John Nicholson
‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion’, said Winston Churchill as prime minister in 1942,…
Top topiary: the year’s best gardening books
There are probably no more gifted professional gardeners in England than Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain, husband and wife and…
Dreams of utopia before the Nazi nightmare
Today Munich is a prosperous and peaceful place — Germany’s most affluent, attractive city. Wandering its leafy avenues, lined with…
What was the celebrated Garrick really like as an actor?
The age of Garrick, Norman Poser, a law professor, insists, gave us much of what we take for granted today…
Japanese puzzle: how can an advanced, dynamic country function with such an ancient population?
When Japan hosts the Rugby Union World Cup next year, and still more so the summer Olympics in 2020, all…
Flexing China’s muscles
We live in interesting times. And, according to Taylor, a respected academic from the Australian National University specialising in geopolitics,…
Arts
The facts – and fiction – of piracy
Avast there, scurvy dogs! For a nation founded on piracy (the privateer Sir Francis Drake swelled the exchequer by raiding…
A charming celebration of Vuillard’s muse – his mum: Barber Institute’s Maman reviewed
Fin-de-siècle Paris was not just the art capital of the world, it was also the fashion capital. In 1901, 300,000…
Britten’s War Requiem almost sounded like a masterpiece – but it’s isn’t, is it?
‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’ We’ve heard a lot, lately, of the knell that tolls through the…
What does the commonplace cruelty of Red Dead Redemption say about our times?
Every era has its western. For 30 years, from The Big Trail through to The Searchers, John Wayne reigned supreme…
Radio 3 had the most simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact
Amid all the remembrance, Radio 3 came up with a simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact. Threaded…
Lorenzo Lotto’s 16th century portraits come startlingly close to photography
You can, perhaps, glimpse Lorenzo Lotto himself in the National Gallery’s marvellous exhibition, Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits. At the base of…
To say this is a ‘once in a generation’ exhibition seems absurdly modest
‘The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two means of death…
How does David Attenborough know what the monkeys are thinking?
The opening episode of BBC1’s Dynasties — the new Attenborough-fronted series from the Natural History Unit — introduced us to…
The ideal album for getting rid of guests over Christmas: Yoko Ono’s Warzone reviewed
Grade: A+ Ooh, you can have some fun with this when the unwanted guests swing by this Christmastide. These are…
A mess: Fantastic Beasts reviewed
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the sequel to the Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find…
Lee Evans’s acrobatic clowning is the best thing about Pinter Three
Pinter Three appeals to opposite poles of the play-going spectrum. The birdbrains like me will enjoy the music-hall sketches while…
Helen Thomson and Caroline Brazier
By my count, the 2019 Season will be the 40th produced by the Sydney Theatre Company. The coming season is…
Life
I love life – and girls – too much to act my age
New York A little Austrian count was born to my daughter last week in Salzburg, early in the morning of…
France’s second world war shame
The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled…
Education, spiritual guidance and a good cappuccino: the new face of the NHS
Left at the Dementia Café, right at the Sleep Office, past the Spiritual Care Centre… This was my journey through…
Paradise mislaid
World champion Magnus Carlsen missed several chances to win with black in the first game of his title defence, currently…
no. 532
Black to play. This is a variation from Carlsen–Caruana (Game 2), London 2018. White has forked the black bishop and…
We’re scamming
In Competition No. 3074 you were invited to submit a scam letter ghostwritten by a well-known author, living or dead.…
2385: R and R
The theme is two historic people who were contemporaries. Unclued lights give their forenames, places of birth and death and…
to 2382: A pointed remark
The quotation is 10/11/39. Remaining unclued lights are all daggers. First prize G. Snailham, WindsorRunners-up Lynne Gilchrist, Willoughby, New South…
Free speech is officially dead in British universities
When I first read about plans for a new academic periodical called The Journal of Controversial Ideas, I got the…
The All Blacks: world-class time-wasters
Marvellous team, the All Blacks, of course. But they certainly know how to waste some time. Here are some things…
Dear Mary: How do I stop rabbits eating Mum’s graveside flowers?
Q. A difficult couple of our acquaintance always object to other guests at dinner and can be very rude to…
It’s a Jewish homage to the Wolseley, and that is no bad thing: Tish reviewed
Tish is a new grand café in Belsize Park, north London, but kosher. There are not really enough Jews to…
Collins dictionary has got ‘gammon’ all wrong
In the annual dictionary wars to nominate words of the year, in the hope of attracting publicity, Collins has made…
