After one of the most gruelling and troubling years of the last few decades, the one thing most of us…

Here is a rag bag collection of events and attitudes of the last twelve months. As we used to say…

My Christmas present to myself is a new life. I’ve always wondered what I will do when I grow up,…

In the footsteps of the Wise Men

The pandemic has exposed how inept state governments are

Much to ponder in the isolated outback

Planning a film by Zoom

No need for social distancing up on Cyprus Avenue

Even without live concerts, Beethoven’s music is a salve

...or how I nearly got to debate a global warmist

Why mRNA vaccines could revolutionise medicine

There was nothing peculiarly British about Brexit

What is truth? You can speak of moral truths and aesthetic truths but I’m not concerned with those here, important…

A short story. Illustrated by Carolyn Gowdy

This recipe was given to me years ago by an old friend — hence the imperial measurements — and I…

Two years ago, the songwriter Nick Cave told his fans that he’d speak to them directly — not through an…

There’s nothing new about ‘new monetary theory’

Finding hope in a year like no other

Seances, trikes and the miracle of tinfoil

The triumph of Korean cinema

The anxieties that long ago shadowed Christmas are back

An interview with the American novelist Mary Gaitskill

Roger Penrose on his Nobel Prize, the beauty of physics – and why AI is nothing to fear

I love Suffolk. This Christmas I will be there with my family and we’ll almost certainly walk up the coast,…

A scientific debate about the virus

‘And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down,…

Chancellor Rishi Sunak on austerity, hill farming and celebrating Christmas as a Hindu

Could it really be 40 years since one was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature? Borne up…

I had a lockdown wedding. A 30-person, socially-distanced, sanitised church service was organised in under two weeks. Restrictions meant no…

To say that the past nine months have been tough is like saying a hurricane felt like a spring shower.…

Which moment seems most significant or interesting?

In a normal week, I would jam with local musicians, but that stopped in March and we musicians miss the…

My November was bookended by two characteristic displays of grace. I ushered it in by falling on all fours while…

What this government needs is a good dose of the London mob, which at its height in the 18th century…

Eton’s free-speech rumpus must surely become a David Hare play, Goodbye Mr Had-Yer-Chips, starring Jeremy Irons as the headmaster and…

Peter Ackroyd on the undimmed spirit of London

Professor Toope, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge university, had proposed a motion ordering all members of the university to ‘respect’ each…

January Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, signed the EU withdrawal agreement, sent from Brussels by train. Sajid Javid, the Chancellor…

Joy Sir: Alexandra Coghlan identifies the coincidence between the rise of recording and broadcast technology and the flourishing of the…

Save for those old enough to have lived through the second world war and its immediate austere aftermath, it would…

Now and then Were households allowed to mix at Christmas during the plague? Samuel Pepys’s diary entry for 25 December…

Among the greatest bores right now are those friends who insist on telling you, usually as if it’s some kind…

I wonder if British universities will follow Cornell’s innovative approach to ensuring students are protected from wretched viruses? The American…

You really don’t want to know about my coughs and sneezes, particularly during the festive season, but bear with me…

Many ingenious ways of evading Covid-19 have been devised to assist commerce, fewer to assist worship. In our next-door village,…

When everything re-opened after the first lockdown, I didn’t immediately head to a restaurant, bar or hairdresser. I went to…

I’ve always been perplexed why anyone lucky enough to be born male would want to swap sexes. But it seems…

The most significant and lasting change brought about by Covid is that it has woken the West up to the…

Tidings of comfort as the vaccination programme advances, but shortage of joy. That’s my summary of a season in which…

This is the prison diary that should never have been written because Cardinal George Pell should never have been in…

Bad year, good books

There was an acidic bravura and beauty in P.J. O’Rourke’s early journalism and a gleefulness in the ease with which…

For answers, visit spectator.com.au/2020/12/answers-to-spot-the-literary-character.

The future of conservatism depends crucially on its ability to withstand the new hard right, says William Hague

Cary Grant was a hoax so sublime his creator struggled to escape him. He was a metaphor, too, for the…

Two things it may be wise to know before picking up this relatively short and surprisingly cheerful brand spanking NEW…

‘My dear young man: don’t take it too hard,’ Joseph II counsels a puppyish Mozart, the colour of his hair…

If this book becomes a Netflix blockbuster, as it surely must, Barbara Amiel presents us with an opening image. She…

Saying you don’t like Bananarama is like saying you don’t like summer or Marilyn Monroe — a sure sign of…

When the estimable Andy Miller, the host of the Backlisted podcast, recommended a new collection of short stories on Twitter,…

This book, soaked like the Dutch Republic itself ‘in ink and paint’, is enchanting to the point of escapism. The…

’Tis the season of complacency, when we sit in warmth and shiver vicariously with Mary and Joseph out in the…

History used to be so much easier. There were the Wars of the Roses, then the Reformation, the Civil War,…

This is an Exquisite Corpse of a novel — or if you prefer another name for that particular game, Heads,…

Ever since my early youth I have loved, followed and respected a certain music genre that some people consider strange,…

It seems on the face of it the oddest proposition on earth. David Fincher, the famous Hollywood director of Fight…

It is indeed a new era. The Australian Ballet announced its 2021 season under the new artistic direction of David…

One of the few social activities not yet prohibited under lockdown laws is four-handed piano playing. I don’t mean sitting…

No one captures better than Raymond Briggs the ambivalence that many of us feel towards the festive season, says Daisy Dunn

Rod Liddle talks to Rick Wakeman about lockdown, the Sex Pistols, and how you can’t have opinions any more

Good evening! Come shivering on in through the garden side door, my friends, and distance yourselves in a semi-legal fashion…

In Black Narcissus, based on the novel by Rumer Godden, five nuns set off for a remote Himalayan palace in…

The Master of Flémalle was one of the first painters to depict in detail the reality of ordinary things. But who was he? Martin Gayford finds a prime suspect

Potted Panto is a 70-minute parody presented by two burlesque comedians. Jeff is a tall, playful bungler and his colleague,…

Sylvie’s Love is an exquisitely styled, swooning, old-school, period Hollywood romance and while it has been described as ‘glib’ in…

Laura Freeman is transported by J.C. Volkamer’s astonishingly beautiful ode to the citrus

In classical music circles, Christmas arrives with the overture to Handel’s Messiah. Or so they’ll tell you. In truth, festivities…

Word-of-the-year of the Year It’s that time of year once again – the season when dictionaries announce their choice for…

New York Here we go again, the annual holiest of holies is upon us, although to this oldie last Christmas…

From Joanna Lumley Q. We receive a huge number of Christmas cards every year. When I take them all down…

One of the staples of crime drama is the ‘cold-case squad’. This allows programme-makers to add period detail to the…

In 2015 smombie became the Youth Word of the Year in Germany. In January 2016 a survey found that 92…

I was thinking about tragedy. Could one use the term ‘chronically tragic’? My first instinct is against. Tragedy is the…

There is straw inside the Fortnum & Mason Christmas Treat Hamper (£100). As the straw drifts through the house, it…

The best thing about sport in 2020 was that any happened at all. And how good much of it was.…

Set by Christopher Howse. Illustrated by Castro

As I gaze at my four children on Christmas morning, clambering on to the bed with their stockings, I will…

Laikipia I was drinking in the fresh air on the high earth wall of my farm dam last week, when…

At the Spectator Christmas PARTY(90) the TREE (42D) has a FAIRY (22), a STAR (78) and TINSEL strewn around (41,…

Every few years I’ve picked up one or other of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time series…

Bring back the men having sex in the undergrowth. This was the thought that occurred to me and my friend…

Each of the unclued lights includes the same letter three times in succession. First prize Tom Rollinson, Borehamwood, Herts Runners-up…

This Christmas, government guidance says that board games are out and quizzes are in. Thus, 12 questions for Christmas. Answers…

Goodbye 2020 and don’t come back. Worst part for bridge players? All the matches and tournaments have been moved online,…

In Competition No. 3179 you were invited to submit a Christmas hit single rewritten as a sonnet. This seasonal challenge…

White to play and mate in five moves. Composed by Kohtz & Kockelkorn, 1875. Be careful — four moves isn’t…

Greville Starkey’s great victories as a jockey included the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on Star Appeal at 119-1. In…