The Spectator
2 May 2020 Aus
Australia
It’s the economy, covid!
Perhaps more than any other magazine, The Spectator Australia was horrified by the Turnbull coup. The real one, that is,…
Australian Columnists
Latham’s law
It’s been the Year of Living in Lockdown. First the wretched bushfires smoked us out so badly we had to…
Australian notes
It’s almost always a binary political world Have you ever wondered what Malcolm Turnbull’s version of the Golden Rule might…
Movie buff notes
Green ain’t green Normally I waste many hours of my working day sitting in a big red chamber while something…
Australian Features
A leftie jumps out of the closet (no, not that closet)
Michael Moore’s new film exposes the renewables hoax
Thanks Malcolm
It turns out Turnbull’s bigger picture was just plain old socialism
Features
Slippers
Tartan, monogram, moccasin, clog. What do your slippers say about you? Trick us all you like with your office Manolos,…
The Week
Portrait of the Week
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, returned to work at Downing Street after recovering from his Covid-19 sickness. Speaking outside…
Call that care?
As the NHS was preparing for the Covid onslaught, thousands of hospital patients were discharged to care homes in an…
Columnists
The Spectator’s Notes
During the second world war, the collection of the National Gallery had to be hidden in a mountain in Wales…
This crisis will be decided by politics, not science
One of the strangest developments to have occurred during this very strange time is that the Prime Minister’s special adviser,…
Sunak was right to tie the banks into his rescue loan scheme
Was the Chancellor wrong to guarantee only 80 per cent, rather than 100, of ‘coronavirus business interruption loans’ to keep…
With an order of cloth the plague arrived
Locked contentedly into the rhythms of farming life and digging for lead on its Derbyshire Peak District slopes, the village…
If this is a war, let’s fight it like one
Under the cloud of conformity that has settled over the land as a replacement for air pollution, heretics who doubt…
Lockdown productivity? Let it go
On the day our A-level exams began some wit wrote on the blackboard: ‘I wasted time, and now doth time…
Books
Killing for a cup of coffee
In the winter of 1939, at the San Francisco Golden Gate trade fair, an advertorial film called Behind the Cup…
A tinpot Caesar
Mussolini dreamed of a new Roman empire and dominion over the Mediterranean. Two decades later he was hanging by his feet in a public square, as Ian Thomson relates
Sadness and scandal
In 1886 the British mathematician and schoolmaster Charles Howard Hinton presented himself to the police at Bow Street, London to…
Flower power
Critics have argued over the meaning of the great golden flower head to which Van Dyck points in his ‘Self-Portrait…
A rude awakening
Some accounts of moving to the countryside are aspirational and inspiring, but this book is more of a ‘how not…
High on speed
I have driven a racing car. On television, it looks like a smooth and scientific matter. It is not. A…
Being Woody Allen
It’s been tough recently being Woody Allen, something that didn’t look too easy to begin with. Last year Amazon breached…
The music deafens
People often say that the battle for male gay rights has been won, at least in the West, and that…
Tyrants at table
Private chefs keep many secrets and are expected to go to their graves without sharing a morsel of gossip about…
The perfect stranger
This novella is suited to our fevered times. Scheduled to coincide with the Swindon spring festival of literature, now cancelled,…
Surprises in store
In these circumstances there’s a temptation to reach for the longest novel imaginable. If you’re not going to read Proust…
A smaller man
Never trust a person who keeps a diary. After all, who keeps a diary other than someone who wants subsequently…
Arts
Geraldine Brooks and Darleen Bungey
Major award-winning biographies of Arthur Boyd and John Olsen have preceded the third book by Darleen Bungey. It is less…
Hopping mad
The ghost of Samuel Beckett oversaw the Hip Hop Loves NY livestream last Thursday night. Time and time again its…
The great escape
When I lived briefly in Stamford Hill I was mesmerised by the huge fur hats (shtreimel) worn by the local…
Nerd mentality
How do you tell a great story? According to Craig Mazin, you have to be a sadist. ‘As a writer,…
Deborah Ross
First, the latest digital film release: The Assistant, starring Julia Garner in a slowly, slowly, catchy, catchy tale that won’t…
No q for the toilet
‘Enjoy world-class theatre online for free,’ announces the National Theatre. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. a play from the archive…
The Met goes Eurovision
Desperate times call for desperate measures. With the world’s opera houses currently dark, the New York Metropolitan Opera tackled the…
Kinetic suitcases
While locked-down galleries compete to keep their artists in the public eye — or ear — by uploading interview podcasts,…
Life
Odd
‘Is this not the oddest news?’ Harriet Smith exclaimed to Emma Woodhouse, on the news that Jane Fairfax and Frank…
Getting your goat
In Competition No. 3146 you were invited to submit a poem about the goats of Llandudno, who recently ran amok…
Solution to 2452: Comme on dit
The paired unclued lights (1D/6, 14/25, 36/32 and 39/1A) are, AS THEY SAY when the title of the puzzle is…
2455: Shadow boxing
The unclued lights (two of two words and one hyphened), individually or as three pairs are of a kind. The…
Puzzle no. 602
Nepomniachtchi (lachesisQ)–Andriasian (Zaven_ChessMood), Abu Dhabi Super Blitz, April 2020. White is in danger here. Which move did he play to…
Hovering amid the din
‘I am extraordinarily patient — provided I get my own way in the end’. That’s a disposition fit for a…
Cavalier approach
This April was indeed the cruellest month, at least for those of us banged up in cities. From the country…
Clapping for Caroline
One of the nice things about having a column in The Spectator is that I get a chance to reply…
Travelling lite
The brother of a friend in Durban was once given a generous donation by a wealthy aunt. ‘I hate to…
