The Spectator
Australia
Expelling Moira
The expulsion of Moira Deeming from the Victorian Liberal party requires one simple question to be answered: what is the…
Euro notes
There are currently 27 members of the European Union and there are applications to join from eight additional countries –…
Australian Features
Cleaning out the Augean stables in Victoria
The federal Liberal party must now intervene
No Voice can fix this chaos
People are dying as politicians ignore the real problems afflicting Aboriginal communities
We already have a Voice and it’s useless
Why nobody is talking about the long-established indigenous Voice to the ACT parliament
Features
Organ trail
The Nigerian politician, the Lagos street trader and the foiled kidney transplant plot
The Week
University challenge
Our country still excels when it comes to higher education. Britain has seven of the world’s top 50 universities. In…
Columnists
My Eurovision winners and losers
I had the sudden suspicion, at about ten o’clock on Saturday night, that I was the only straight male in…
Is Rishi out of ideas?
Ever since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, his aides have worried that May would be the month of mutiny. His…
Fake it till you make it
Not to sound too much like Kamala Harris during one of her peregrinations on the nature of time, but the…
Could Derbyshire survive on its own?
Since at least the beginning of this century there has been a mood abroad – cultural as well as political…
The myths around immigration
After the media bigged up the expiration of America’s Covid-era Title 42, which enabled the US to block entries into…
Books
Racing greens
Nicholas Clee provides gripping stories of famous horses, jockeys and trainers, along with a history of racing itself and the best places to watch the spectacle
The haunted valley
Malcolm Harris is unsparing in his attack on Palo Alto’s tech giants past and present, including Leland Stanford, Herbert Hoover, William Shockley and Peter Thiel
Carry on laughing
Sylvia Patterson manages to bring much rackety humour to bear in her descriptions of the pain and indignity her treatment involves
The root of the problem
The novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo is attracted by the freedom a New York job promises, but misses the young daughter she has left behind in London
Evil geniuses
Does knowledge of the wrongs committed by Caravaggio, Picasso, Roman Polanski and other ‘monsters’ condition our response to their art, wonders Claire Dederer
Feline mysteries
In his vast survey of felines wild and domestic, Jonathan Losos reveals, among much else, that a cat’s purr can convey hunger or panic as well as pleasure
Literary charades
Blending fact and fiction, France combines a tale of antics on a creative writing course with episodes from her family life
Was it murder?
In a beautifully told novel, O’Callaghan focuses on the mysterious death of the footballer Matthias Sindelar in 1939 – possibly as a result of defying Hitler
From she-devil to heroine
Jonny Steinberg describes Nelson and Winnie’s doomed marriage, and how their posthumous reputations have undergone a startling reversal
Father figures
In a second memoir, Motion focuses on how he became a poet, and his search for father figures, including W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin
A veil of obscurity
Philip Hensher discusses how words relating to women’s ordinary experiences have been shrouded in euphemism over the centuries
Arts
Strange bedfellows
What a whirlwind the world of the arts can be. Gabrielle Carey who changed forever the image of teenage girlish…
Death on the Nile
The most controversial aspect of Netflix’s new drama-documentary Queen Cleopatra – not least in Egypt – was the casting of…
Girl’s world
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is an adaptation of Judy Blume’s seminal young adult novel (1970) about an…
Top gear
Normally, when you look at portraits you feel obliged to focus on the sitter. But quite often you’re thinking, ‘Ooh,…
Ladies first
In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the…
Irish ayes
I was listening the other week to a solo album by an ageing rock guitarist, once terrifically famous. It was…
How do I hate thee?
A new play, The Misandrist, looks at modern dating habits. Rachel is a smart, self-confident woman whose partner is a…
Florid flummery
Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring…
Me and Mr Jones
Adam Sweeting talks to the documentary-maker Nick Broomfield about the forgotten Rolling Stone
Life
Aussie life
As the head of a dynasty which owes its wealth and influence to military aggression, white supremacy and colonial exploitation,…
Language
Have you come across the word ‘transabled’? This is a new one on me, and I find it a frightening…
The Wiki Man
Our local Sainsbury’s, though admirable in every other way, has a slightly inflated estimate of the disabled population of Seven-oaks,…
Am I a grifter?
I’m trying to organise an event in Westminster with the journalist Isabel Oakeshott and it’s proving a bit of a…













































































