The Spectator
21 April 2018 Aus
Adventures on Thought Crime Island
Australia
In praise of Israel (1)
Free speech has a new champion, and his name is Israel Folau. And once again, the corporate, political and media…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
It was inevitable that sooner or later the sexual harassment scandal would change tack and ensnare some of those who…
Australian notes
Sorry seems to be the easiest word I am sorry to have to say this, but I think we all…
Australian Features
Harlotry in the collective of collectives
Who controls the mainstream media? Baldwin famously declared that moguls like Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook did, exercising power without…
Adventures on Thought Crime Island
Britain has broken out the banhammer and is coming after your favourite comedians. It’s also decided words matter more than…
Trump’s red line
One of the revelations of the 14 April military attack on three government sites in Syria by the United States,…
Manipulating Facebook
Judging by the way Mark Zuckerberg was cross-examined before Congress last week, you’d think Facebook was on the brink of…
Business/Robbery etc
Whacko! American farmers have now joined the Australian economy in being seriously at risk of collateral damage from ‘friendly fire’…
Patchwork power
The Australian summer has passed with only the occasional blackout, although a possibly grim winter, once unseasonably warm weather in…
Features
The wrong Brexit: what happened to ‘Global Britain’?
A few months ago, Britain’s most senior ambassadors gathered in the Foreign Office to compare notes on Brexit. There was…
James Comey is trying to take down Trump. He’ll fail
Americans forget their corruption in order to savour their innocence. When Republicans and Democrats are struggling to find ways forward…
What will the next war look like?
Imagine Peace. These were the words that appeared on an otherwise blank page in the New York Times on New…
Why do British charities want to shut down private schools in Africa?
Why would anyone who claims to care about the world’s poorest children try to shut down their schools? It’s strange…
Low-cost private schools are transforming lives in the third world
Private schools in the United Kingdom are affordable only to those on the highest incomes. But surprisingly to many, this…
Not one of my Harvard students thinks Brexit is a good idea
My wife laughs that my love of gadgets is a remnant of my Communist upbringing, when western toys were objects…
University Challenge
One programme that still shines out as a beacon of intellectual rigour among the sea of dross on television is…
The Week
A home truth for the Tories: fix the housing crisis or lose power for ever
Much rot is spoken about how the young have it so bad. In fact, this generation is healthier, richer and…
Racism and the RSC: why I was a sitting duck for the arts mob
Our ducks are back. Two wild mallard have spent the last five springs on the brook which gurgles past us…
Portrait of the Week: Allied air strikes on Syria and the Windrush scandal
Home Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, apologised in Parliament for the treatment of immigrants from the Commonwealth from before 1971,…
The Church of England must be robust with its snowflake congregants
Sit the snowflakes down Sir: I was surprised to read Theo Hobson’s article about ‘snowflake’ Christians in the C of…
Columnists
What the Windrush scandal reveals about Theresa May
Everyone speaks about the Windrush. The boat was actually called the Empire Windrush. The full name reveals what the story…
Corbyn’s profoundly anti-western worldview is fully exposed at last
The Tories’ great worry after the last election was that they had effectively vaccinated the electorate against Jeremy Corbyn. They…
A joke about Welsh vowels is a hate crime, say the tuppenny panjandrums
It took four days to actually see the pine marten in the flesh. We caught it on a trail cam…
Why I have succumbed to sourdough mania
This ought to be the perfect time for a rant about how we’ve reached peak sourdough. It’s been all the…
An odd new feeling has crept up on me – sympathy for the police
Spring has come to my local park in its usual way. First the magnolias, then the cherry blossom, then the…
I’m an optimist for trade despite the idiocies of politicians
I’m proud to be a member of the 661-year-old Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York, having qualified…
Books
Texas: the myriad contradictions of the Lone Star state
The subtitle of Lawrence Wright’s splendid God Save Texas (‘A Journey into the Future of America’) would be alarming if…
Is there no end to books on the ‘end of France’?
Here is a detail that says a lot. In the French translation of this latest book by the Israeli historian…
Did the Grenfell Tower fire put paid to the social housing ideal?
As a schoolboy, I used to go round to my best mate Mike’s home. It was a good place: a…
For the man who has everything, only a space rocket will do
Today’s VHNWI wants a PRSHLS. That’s Very High Net-Worth Individual and Partially Reuseable Super Heavy Lift System. Or, in the…
Guess who’s coming to dinner with Angela Huth?
Anglea Huth, the broadcaster and author of some 18 books, has now written her memoirs, Not the Whole Story. And…
Pathos and humanity in pictures of abject misery
In 1971 the late Linda Nochlin burst onto the public scene with her groundbreaking essay, ‘Why Have There Been No…
What does John Gray’s anti-atheism amount to?
K. Chesterton, in one of his wise and gracious apothegms, once wrote that ‘When Man ceases to worship God he…
Our sheltered lives have made us overly fearful: Aminatta Forna’s Happiness reviewed
In her keynote lecture for a conference on ‘The Muse and the Market’ in 2015 Aminatta Forna mounted a powerful…
There’s much of Astrid Lindgren in the carrot-haired rebel Pippi Longstocking
Pippi Longstocking is a nine-year-old girl who lives alone with a monkey and horse in a cottage called Villa Villekulla…
Oddballs and lefties
Ah, populism: is it a fulsome democratic expression of giving people what they want or merely join-the-dots fear-mongering? Bit of…
Arts
This V&A show, about fashion’s fascination with the natural world, will seduce and appal
One of the prettiest pieces in the V&A exhibition Fashioned from Nature is a man’s cream waistcoat, silk and linen,…
Closing the Queen Elizabeth Hall invigorated the new music scene. Why reopen it?
Imagine the National inviting RuPaul to play Hamlet. Or Tate giving Beryl Cook a retrospective. The London Sinfonietta offered a…
Why be so frightened of Enoch Powell’s speech now?
It was a provocative decision by the producers of Archive on 4, 50 Years On: Rivers of Blood (Nathan Gower…
Jaw-dropping: My Year with the Tribe reviewed
For a while now, the Korowai people of Western Papua have been the go-to primitive tribe for documentary-makers. The Korowai…
Why it’s bad for potters to think of themselves as artists
A friend of mine once owned a vase by the potter Hans Coper — until, that is, her teenage son…
A delicious operatic ragout of horror: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk reviewed
There is famously no door into the late-night diner of Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’. Its three silent patrons are trapped behind…
Maxine Peake is blistering in Funny Cow
Two films about women this week. One, Funny Cow, is about a woman who daringly takes on men at their…
Some fairly rich people rip off some very rich people. Who are we rooting for? Quiz reviewed
Quiz by James Graham looks at the failed attempt in 2001 to swindle a million quid from an ITV game…
Heather Mitchell
This probably is a bad idea; I mean writing a column about a transgender person. Even Germain Greer got herself…
Life
It is a sin to die in the Land of the Depraved
New York Remember when the internet, Twitter, Facebook and other such useless gimmicks were supposed to usher in an era…
Brexit for eight-year-olds
A week ago I plucked my eight-year-old grandson Oscar from the bosom of his rumbustious young family and took him…
Do we really need an app for everything?
‘If this madness goes on, I will not be able to leave my house without downloading the app,’ I told…
Fischer redivivus
The Berlin qualifying tournament to determine the challenger to world champion Magnus Carlsen has ended in victory for the American…
no. 502
White to play. This position is from Karjakin-Caruana, Berlin 2018. This game was Caruana’s only reverse in Berlin. Karjakin now…
Let’s talk about sex
In Competition No. 3044 you were invited to provide a lesson in the facts of life courtesy of a well-known…
2355: 13 16
13 1A 23 22 is an eight-word quotation by 34 in ODQ. Other unclued lights, including one of three words,…
to 2352: Upright Characters
‘THE WRITING ON THE WALL’ (Daniel 5.5) at 12/22/41 was ‘MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN’ at 23/16/26, according to Brewer, which…
How to get your child into the best state school: an insider’s tips
Monday was ‘national offer day’, which means that more than half a million parents across England were notified about which…
I love this Pep-mania, but don’t forget Klopp
Fittingly, it took a dire performance from a dismal and dreary United against the worst team in the Premier League…
Dear Mary: At a smart dinner party, is it wrong to ask for the wifi code?
Q. My husband and I are excited to have been invited to dinner by our most important neighbour. However our…
If it’s austere calm you want, Bentley’s Oyster Bar and Grill is for you
Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill is on Swallow Street, an alley between Piccadilly and Regent Street, which swallowed most of…
That Beano word ‘scoff’ was first coined in the mid-19th century
Scarcely a sober breath has been drawn in my house all week for celebrating the 90th anniversary of the completion…
