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The Spectator

18 February 2023 Aus

Political oddity

How the internet has ch-ch-changed everything

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Australia

Leading article Australia

King, a canary in the coal mine?

‘We won’t get to net-zero emissions in this country, or indeed the world, without the resources sector, without gas, and…

Australian Columnists

Australian Notes

Australian notes

ABC grope-think True to its mission to enlighten and entertain, the ABC has set out to inform us about the…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Just copy DeSantis

How conservatives can win again

Features Australia

Business/Robbery, etc

The era of the woke CEO is over

Features Australia

War of words

Objectivity’s out in US newsrooms

Features Australia

Land of the long white-anting

Are politicians destroying New Zealand?

Features Australia

F is for Fauci’s failed vaccines

Heroic Aussie GP reveals jab’s scary safety signals

Features Australia

Political oddity

How the internet has ch-ch-changed everything

Features Australia

Dark ages coming

Transitioning to blackouts

Features

Features

After Sturgeon

What’s the future for Scotland – and the Union?

Features

Fast and furious

The prospect of meatless Lenten days does not thrill me

Features

Paper dragons

Is Chinese science all it’s cracked up to be?

Features

University challenge

Revealed: Aberdeen’s ‘curriculum decolonising’ plans

Features

‘Governments need to grow up’

Mariana Mazzucato and Rory Sutherland on consultancy’s overreach

Features

Flights of fancy

How UFOs captured the imagination of America – and the world

The Week

Leading article

State of the Union

Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation as First Minister of Scotland comes at a critical moment for the Union, since the question of…

Letters

Letters

Schools out Sir: Toby Young is absolutely spot-on in his assessment of the impact of Labour’s plans to put VAT…

Columnists

Columns

Bibi’s big mistake

  Jerusalem   As 100,000 Israelis gathered outside Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday, to protest against Binyamin Netanyahu’s government’s…

Columns

Those naughty Vikings had it coming

A little late in the day, perhaps, it has been pointed out to the intellectual colossi of South Tyneside Council…

Columns

The toxic cult of self-love

I used to think that the early hours of the morning were for sleeping. Sometimes they might become an extension,…

Columns

Prevent’s radical reading list

The late Robert Conquest adumbrated three rules of politics. Perhaps the most famous (also known as O’Sullivan’s law) is that…

Books

More from Books

Guns and roses

The novelist and travel writer reflects on the resilience of the human spirit in countries whose staggering beauty has largely been trashed

More from Books

Triumphs and disasters

It was a year packed with drama – from the transatlantic crossing of the SS Great Britain to the start of the Irish potato blight that would leave millions starving

More from Books

A case of underexposure

The biographer and journalist was always reluctant to write about herself, and this posthumously published memoir is hemmed in by what she kept locked away

More from Books

Man of many parts

The learning on display in this latest Collected Non-Fiction is as astonishing as ever – though ‘B-sides and Rarities’ might describe the more marginal pieces

More from Books

The plight of Wales

Exploring stretches of the country’s Roman road, Tom Bullough notes how climate change and environmental degradation are seriously threatening the landscape

More from Books

From babe to matriarch

Even the serious abuse she suffered as a small child and a teenager is described without a trace of self-pity

More from Books

A Caribbean mystery

When a rich farmer goes missing and his young wife seeks the protection of an impoverished labourer, the consequences are disastrous

More from Books

Doctor in despair

A surgeon from Kashmir is tormented by the penal operations he once performed under Sharia law, such as amputations for robbery

More from Books

The other side of the coin

Any mention of imperialism’s benefits is now considered morally reprehensible, as the furore over Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism shows

More from Books

The day the music died

The vast majority of musicians who adopted 1960s rock and roll were later reviled by the Khmer Rouge and consigned to the Killing Fields, says Dee Payok

Lead book review

What is Asia?

Is it merely a European construct – and what, if anything, do its diverse peoples have in common, wonders Peter Frankopan

Arts

Australian Arts

Aristocratic panache

Last week saw the streaming of the sixth and final episode of Happy Valley, the Yorkshire policier with the great…

Television

So damned German

I was almost tempted not to watch Kleo because it sounded like so many things I’d seen before: beautiful ex-Stasi…

Classical

The lady on the No. 26

I was sceptical when the lady on the bus to Reading town centre told me that her father knew Liszt.…

Theatre

Megaphonic honks

Simon Stone claims that his new comedy, Phaedra, draws on the work of Euripides, Seneca and Racine. In fact, the…

Radio

Ice cream and pickles

Can you ever truly know a poet? The question arises every time one publishes a collection that looks vaguely confessional.…

Cinema

Man and boy

For my money – and lots of other people’s – Florian Zeller’s 2020 film The Father was pretty much a…

Pop

Rocky horror show

There is footage on the internet of Robert Smith, lead singer in the Cure, being interviewed on the occasion of…

Exhibitions

On Finchleystrasse

Halfway up the stairs to the Royal College of Music’s exhibition Music, Migration & Mobility is a map of NW3,…

Arts feature

Who’s that girl?

Laura Gascoigne on Vermeer’s women

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

Of the five Australians who have won the Booker Prize, which one is on the NSW HSC English set text…

Aussie Life

Language

I’ve been tracking the way the word ‘racism’ has changed in recent times. Both the word and the concept of…

Crossword

2592: Uncle Victor

The unclued Across lights were of a kind, as are the unclued Down lights now. All are verifiable in Brewer…

Competition

That’s amore

In Competition No. 3286, you were invited to submit a toe-curling Valentine poem to Harry, or to the love object…

Food

Culinary art

The Mount St Restaurant lives above the Audley Public House on Mount Street, ‘a traditional neighbourhood pub, carefully restored, and…

Spectator sport

Nice try, but England rugby could do better

The first two rounds of the Six Nations have exploded across the sporting landscape insuperlative – draining displays of skill…

No sacred cows

Mark Steyn and the free-speech question

James Delingpole and I had a blazing row on our weekly podcast on Monday. We were discussing the recent departure…

Wild life

The man who makes money where no one else dares to go

Rwanda The mineshaft is dark, the air humid and starved of oxygen. I follow Marcus Edwards-Jones out of the muddy…

Real life

My eight-year campaign to cancel my mobile phone contract

The man in the phone shop greeted me with what I presume is a look specifically designed and reserved for…

Low life

Kicking a football has been one of the joys of my life

Two nights running I was incontinent of urine and woke up with warmly weighted pyjama bottoms. Former nurse Catriona didn’t…