The Spectator
21 October 2023 Aus
Albotross
Australia
Albotross
The Prime Minister now hangs around the neck of the Labor party and leftist politics in general like Samuel Taylor…
Australian Columnists
Australian notes
Did you know that the Australian government in bygone days issued licences to citizens to hunt Aboriginals? No, I didn’t…
Australian Features
Features Australia, New Zealand
Poetic justice in New Zealand
A double victory for conservatism down under
It was the Speccie wot won it
This magazine alone said No to the Voice from the very start
Let’s say No to the rest of it
Welcomes, acknowledgments and flags need to be curtailed
Three-quarters of a billion dollars down the drain
Albanese squanders more than just our money
Features
Political Islam now commands the Middle East
No sane American president takes office hoping for war. Woodrow Wilson, a 56-year-old Princeton academic, said it would be ‘the…
Netanyahu has failed Israel
Jerusalem Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza is rapidly evolving into a war with all of Iran’s proxies…
Europe needs to step up on Ukraine
Vasyl, a burly, tattooed infantry commander who lost a leg to a Russian mine on the eastern front, sits swinging…
Ukraine’s fight has been eclipsed by the ‘Other War’
The first indication that this was a literary festival like no other came with the request to provide ‘proof of…
The real reason for falling birth rates
No nation in history is known to have emerged from the grip of long-term low birth rates. This sobering reality…
The World at War is the greatest documentary series ever made
To present a TV history documentary these days, one must first have access to the full Angels and Bermans dressing-up…
How to win five Nobel prizes in literature
‘Hi Jacques,’ I say as the publisher of Fitzcarraldo Editions appears on my Zoom screen with his Franz Hals facial…
Can Israel’s hostages be saved?
The last message that Shaked Haran saw from her father was just after 7.30 a.m. on the Saturday of the…
The Week
Europeans are rejecting the EU’s unworkable vision
The recent election in Poland has been presented by some as a triumph of liberalism over the dark forces of…
Columnists
Facebook’s not-so-secret police
I was greatly tempted by Sam Leith’s suggestion in a column on The Spectator’s website this week that we should…
The SNP’s reckoning is coming
The SNP party conference in Aberdeen this week wasn’t the nationalist jamboree activists had hoped for. Even though it was…
Keep your politics à la carte
It’s a truism that the Anglosphere has developed a ‘tribalism’ that rivals the divisions between the Kikuyu and Luhya in…
The four big questions our politicians need to answer
Anyone would think (anyone, that is, who has followed our three main annual party conferences this autumn) that Britain’s principal…
Why do we allow protests that glorify slaughter?
There are times when you wonder how history happened. And other times when you realise how it did. The past…
Books
The hell of the antebellum South: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward, reviewed
Teenage Annis and her enslaved mother endure beatings and rape as they are marched in chains to New Orleans to be sold to the latest brutal plantation owner
Thurston Moore relives the early days of Sonic Youth
Reminiscing about his many friends and colleagues in the 1970s, Moore even finds good things to say about the Dead Boys and Sid Vicious
Satirical pulp: The Possessed, by Witold Gombrowicz, reviewed
The 1939 Gothic pastiche which the author was at pains to distance himself from is now considered a delightfully devious work of Polish modernism
Anonymous caller: This Plague of Souls, by Mike McCormack, reviewed
A man returns to his remote rural home after an absence – to be greeted not by his family but a sinister stranger on the telephone
The golden age of Dutch art never ceases to amaze
Benjamin Moser reminds us of how freely painters borrowed each other’s subjects – and of how many of the greatest, including Rembrandt, died in poverty
‘The truth will make us free’: students on the march in post-war Europe
The radical Rudi Dutschke in 1960s Berlin and the angry Johnny Rotten in 1970s London are just two of the charismatic figures in this history of youth activism
‘We are stuck like chicken feathers to tar’: Elizabeth Taylor’s description of the fabled romance
The Burton-Taylor relationship was either one of the greatest love stories of all time or a suicide pact carried out in relentless slow motion
A satire on the American art world: One Woman Show, by Christine Coulson, reviewed
Rich, pretty Kitty has been admired since childhood – but will the Park Avenue princess spend her entire life as a collectable object for connoisseurs?
Wallowing in misery: Tremor, by Teju Cole, reviewed
An introspective art lecturer immerses himself in the history of slavery – and fears he has grown addicted to screen depictions of extreme brutality
Has Bazball rescued or ruined cricket?
Thanks to Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, English Test cricket has been revolutionised – at the expense of the gentle, contemplative game
The mystery of Werner Herzog
The film director treats us to a dervish dance of anecdotes but still keeps his real life secret, says Peter Bradshaw
Arts
Astonishing mistress of song & dance
The Newsreader has already caught a lot of attention for the way in which it weaves together a strong sense…
Uninventive and far too polite: BRB’s Black Sabbath – The Ballet reviewed
Not being an aficionado of the heavy-metal genre, I snootily suspected that I would rather be standing in the rain…
Why intellectuals love Disney
This month marks the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney’s company. The first cartoons it was founded to produce – the…
Virgin on the astonishing: Madonna, at The O2, reviewed
When I was a kid listening obsessively to AC/DC and Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, I despaired of music writers.…
How Philip Guston became a hero to a new generation of figurative painters
Why do painters represent things? There was a time when the answers seemed obvious. Art glorified power, earthly and divine,…
Only goodwill will get you through this reboot: Paramount+’s Frasier reviewed
Remember the groans of dismay, possibly including your own, which greeted John Cleese’s announcement in February that he was reviving…
Juicy solution to the Purcell problem: Opera North’s Masque of Might reviewed
Another week, another attempt to solve the Purcell problem. There’s a problem? Well, yes, if you consider that a composer…
Scherzinger is superb but why’s the set so dark and ugly? Sunset Boulevard, at the Savoy Theatre, reviewed
Sunset Boulevard is a re-telling of the Oedipus story set in the cut-throat world of Hollywood. Pick a side in…
Epic, immersive and tiresomely long: Killers of the Flower Moon reviewed
Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a Western crime drama that runs to three-and-a-half hours. (Sit on that,…
How the Georgians invented nightlife
Dan Hitchens on the Georgian obsession with lavish light shows and nocturnal adventures
Life
Aussie life
Timing matters just as much in tragedy as it does in comedy. And it is important to remember that the…
Language
The word ‘special’ means: ‘Exceptional in quality or degree; unusual; out of the ordinary; excelling in some way’ (Oxford English…
They call me the ‘problem teetotaller’
My guts went on strike last July. I was staying in a hotel and I spent several days sprawled on…
It’s time to take Italian wine seriously
Tuscany: earth has not anything to show more fair. The landscape is charming. The gentle hills seem to smile down…
Are we asking the wrong questions about HS2?
I am not sure there was much else Rishi could have done to salvage HS2. But I come bearing good…
I’ve turned 60 – but all is not lost
By the time you read this I’ll be 60, having passed that milestone on Tuesday. My older friends tell me…















































































