The Spectator
Australia
A glorious coalition of conservatives
As Scott Morrison sets up the idea of ‘who do you trust?’ as his 2022 election theme, and in doing…
Australian Features
Herding sheeple onto the vaccine treadmill
When it comes to Covid, the numbers never seem to add up
Japan, Taiwan and the threat of Xi Jinping
... and Paul Keating’s bizarre comments
Strong people are harder to kill than weak people
On the threats to Taiwan and the Ukraine
Features
Mullets
The mullet is back in fashion, which is proof that true evil never dies. What’s more, the trend is being…
Royal Notebook
On a long-ago Remembrance Sunday, it fell to me, as a new service equerry, to present the Prince of Wales…
The Week
Asylum isn’t working
Emad Al Swealmeen, who blew himself up in a taxi outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, is not believed to have…
Words and deeds
Greta Thunberg and her supporters were loud in protest at COP26, but one wonders to what end. They demanded deeds,…
Portrait of the week
Home The UK terror threat level was raised to severe after a taxi exploded and burst into flames just before…
Columnists
In praise of stigma
Exciting news from Durham University, which is helping its students to become ‘sex workers’. This noble institution is offering two…
A rail plan that levels up by disappointing everyone
The scrapping of most of the eastern leg of HS2, originally planned from Birmingham to Leeds, is a news item…
When memory lane becomes a cul-de-sac
I begin this column on a train from Paris to London. Opposite me are a mother and baby. I don’t…
Angela Rayner’s moment
Almost no MP has emerged with dignity from the sleaze debacle of the past three weeks. Boris Johnson’s botched attempt…
Inoculated against the facts
When a column highlighting under-appreciated breaking news has had absolutely no impact on the course of events (per usual), the…
Books
No fairytale
I once stood on a Dublin street with Shane MacGowan and watched little old ladies who can’t ever have been…
Fears of popery
Stuart England did not do its anti-Catholicism by halves. In the late 1670s and early 1680s, a popular feature of…
From nomads to emperors
This is the best of times to be writing history, since so much of what has been taken for granted,…
Mawkish melodrama
Rose Tremain’s 15th novel begins with a favoured schmaltzy image of high Victoriana: it is a night (if not dark…
Books of the year II
A further selection of the books enjoyed by some of our regular reviewers in 2021
Death is rarely the end
In March 1963, the Fantastic Four had a fractious encounter with Spider-Man and a dust-up with the Hulk — a…
Do elephants dance?
It’s almost a shock to admit it, but this year’s gift books aren’t bad at all. It’s even possible that,…
Desperate remedies
One of Adrian Tinniswood’s recent books, The Long Weekend, is a portrait of country house life in the interwar years.…
Partying through the pandemic
It is, as you’ve possibly noticed, a tricky time for old-school American liberals, now caught between increasingly extreme versions of…
Arts
Don’t forget the motor city
No Sudden Move, Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Streaming on Amazon Prime
Sean Connery
Anyone who cares about the theatre should rush to see Kendall Feaver’s Wherever She Wanders which Griffin Theatre Company is…
Putting on the glitz
From quartz to quince: Daisy Dunn on the art and science of Fabergé
A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do
Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog could also be called The Power of Benedict Cumberbatch, as he’s so spectacular.…
Soul searching
No musician ever went bust overestimating the public desire to hear classic soul. Slapping on a Motown backbeat has revived…
The root of the matter
Thanks to Covid, the days are gone — or at least suspended — when a TV travel programme meant a…
In a class of its own
Mike Leigh’s classic, Abigail’s Party, has been revived under the direction of Vivienne Garnett. The script is a guilty secret…
Beach House: Once Twice Melody
Grade: B+ Everything these days devolves to prog — and not always very good prog. Where once synths were vastly…
An honorary Frenchman
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
Men in black
Martin McNamara, the writer of Mosley Must Fall, a play on Radio 4 this week, must have had a jolt…
Whistling the scenery
With Glyndebourne’s The Rake’s Progress, the show starts with David Hockney’s front cloth. The colour, the ingenuity, the visual bravura:…
Life
Aussie Life
You know the royals are in trouble when a prominent member of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy writes an article suggesting…
Aussie Language
It’s that time of the year again—when dictionaries around the world start announcing their chosen ‘Word of the Year’. First…
2533: Monday’s Child
A nine-word phrase (in five unclued lights, two used twice) opens a work for 1A (three words) by 8 (two…
Uranus
I had thought there were two pronunciations of Uranus. My husband, still capable of distinguishing the anatomical from the planetary,…
Taking back control
A friend of mine recently visited a company in Europe which plans to manufacture human-carrying, pilotless drones. These would be…
Israel’s heady Heights
‘Where is this from?’ my friend asked, handing me a wine glass. It was a Cabernet Sauvignon, high in alcohol,…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. We have recently installed security cameras in our remote holiday house in the south of France and I was…
The day I became a prize contrarian
Something rather unusual happened to me a few weeks ago: I was shortlisted for a prize. Not the GQ Men…
Puzzle No. 680
White to play and win. The conclusion of an endgame study by Henri Rinck. The imminent promotion of the g-pawn…
Lancashire hotpot
Nine months ago, after a decade spent in London, I moved to Lancashire. Although I’m a northerner born and bred,…
Solution to 2530: Ups and downs
The quotation is ‘LAUGH, AND THE WORLD LAUGHS WITH YOU; WEEP, AND YOU WEEP ALONE’ from Solitude by Ella Wheeler…
Night terrors
In Competition No. 3225, you were invited to provide a version of the Lord Chancellor’s ‘Nightmare Song’ from Iolanthe for…
Sacrificing the queen
One of the most eye-catching games from the recently concluded Fide Grand Swiss in Riga saw an early sacrifice of…













































































