The Spectator
21 September 2024 Aus
The white man’s burden
Critical race theory is racist and deliberately foments division
Australia
Narrow church
Increasingly, and not surprisingly, political pundits across the mainstream media are beginning to say what this magazine has been saying…
Australian Features
This Bill is a disgrace
Libs must fight now for free speech. Or lose the election.
The white man’s burden
Critical race theory is racist and deliberately foments division
Leo’s worldwide hypocrisy tour
DiCaprio sells us his environmental cartoon, but is anybody buying it?
Features
The joy of hiring an old banger
There is always much to look forward to on a holiday with friends in France (the day one supermarket sweep,…
Cheers to corkscrews!
For the first 50 years of the corked bottle, there was no easy way to get into it. The combination…
Nigel’s next target: Reform has Labour in its sights
At this weekend’s Reform conference in Birmingham, the opening speech will be given by a man who wasn’t even a…
How the EU turned on Ireland’s low-tax project
First, the good news. The Irish government is about to receive a €13 billion windfall in the form of back…
Hezbollah’s exploding pagers are just the start
Israel’s security cabinet met in a bunker in the ministry of defence in Tel Aviv on Monday night. The main…
Why can’t China play football?
It would be tough for any country to lose 7-0 in a World Cup qualifier, but when the losing team…
A chillingly seductive glimpse of assisted dying
A few weeks ago, I was present when my aunt, a Canadian citizen born in the UK, chose to die…
It’s time to let Ukraine join Nato
Kyiv The young amputee had a question. We were sitting once again in the rehab centre in Kyiv, and I…
The Week
How much do we spend on workwear?
The first nimby Who coined the term ‘nimby’? — The expression, from ‘Not In My Backyard’, entered the political sphere…
Labour vs labour: how can the government claim to be promoting growth?
Growth, growth, growth: that was what Keir Starmer told us would be his government’s priority in his first press conference…
The ancients knew the value of practical education
The welfare state was designed to serve everyone’s needs. But those needs were defined by the state. So schools teach…
Portrait of the week: Keir Starmer’s free clothes, Huw Edwards sentenced and Tupperware faces bankruptcy
Home Sir Keir Starmer met Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy, in Rome and said that sending funds to…
I’m engaged!
I slept only between the hours of 5 and 6 a.m, thanks to self-induced terror tactics. My son Adam stayed…
Letters: The mass appeal of cathedrals
Mass appeal Sir: The upcoming ‘rave’ at Peterborough Cathedral follows the trajectory of using this sacred space as a mere…
Columnists
Are the Tories brave enough to be conservative?
The Conservative party is out of power – and that’s not easy if you’ve been in power for more than…
The adult ADHD trap
I was on the bus recently and bored when I decided not to ignore but to answer one of those…
In defence of McJobs
The burden of higher taxation must fall on those with ‘the broadest shoulders’, says the Prime Minister, and City folks…
The tyranny of lawyers
I have spent most of the morning trying to convince people online that Huw Edwards’s conviction does not mean that…
Ed Davey’s game plan
Ed Davey owes much of his election success to Boris Johnson – and in more ways than one. The slide-loving,…
Do you have a ‘story’?
As someone who worked full time in the office for 24 years and has now worked full time from home…
Books
Nothing was off-limits for ‘the usual gang of idiots’ at Mad
First published in 1952, the satirical magazine helped free the American youth of Vietnam War era of some of the stupidest beliefs they were supposed to hold about their country
The sad story of the short-lived Small Faces
The influential 1960s rock band should have enjoyed the longevity of the Rolling Stones. But disputes with managers over low record royalties led to frustration, tension and disillusionment
Mysteries and misogyny: The Empusium, by Olga Tokarczuk, reviewed
Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann’s masterpiece The Magic Mountain in this ‘health resort horror story’ set in a Silesian guesthouse on the eve of the first world war
The troublesome idealism of Simone Weil
Hailed as ‘an uncompromising witness to the modern travails of the spirit’ , Weil also exasperated those closest to her with her ambitions for heroic self-denial
Life among the world’s biggest risk-takers
The billionaires currently driving technology and the global economy are willing to take bets on very long odds, and treat everything as a market to be played
Unrecorded lives: Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout, reviewed
The pandemic’s aftershocks are still felt in Crosby, as Strout’s best-loved characters, Olive, Lucy, Jim and Bob, reminisce about people they have known, imbuing their lives with meaning
Heartbreaking scenes: Annihilation, by Michel Houellebecq, reviewed
Set in 2027, with France in a state of economic and moral decay, Houellebecq’s deeply affecting novel is really a meditation on love and death and the way we treat the dying
Bones, bridles and bits – but where’s the horse?
Ancient equine remains provide fascinating clues to migration and warfare – but the animals themselves seem largely absent in William T. Taylor’s history of the horse
The SAS explode from the shadows in six days that shook Britain
The siege of the Iranian embassy in London in the spring of 1980 achieved nothing for the terrorists. But the previously reclusive elite army unit soon became the stuff of legend
Arts
And then there was the voice
It was at Cape Liptrap that the call came through. The setting was almost absurdly beautiful, the sea one way…
Manacorda’s thrills and spills at Prom 72
At a Hollywood party in the 1940s, the garrulous socialite Elsa Maxwell spotted Arnold Schoenberg, then teaching music at UCLA,…
More Airplane! than Speed: Nightsleeper reviewed
Earlier this year, ITV brought us Red Eye, a six-part drama set mainly on an overnight plane from London to…
A massive, joyous, sensational hit: Why Am I So Single? reviewed
Why Am I So Single? opens with two actors on stage impersonating the play’s writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss.…
Ten times better than Taylor Swift: Romance, by Fontaines D.C., reviewed
Grade: B+ Almost all modern popular music is afflicted by a desperate yearning for importance, and thus – as it…
Inside the mind of Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh only got one major review in his career, and he was mystified by it. When the critic Albert…
Not for the squeamish: The Substance reviewed
Both horribly familiar and wonderfully shocking, this body-horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat does a very traditional thing…
Who should win the Stirling Prize?
The Stirling Prize is the Baftas for architects, a moment for auto-erotic self-congratulation. Awarded by the Royal Institute of British…
My night with the worst kind of nostalgia
American Football are a band whose legend was formed by the internet: some Illinois college kids who made an album…
Life
Aussie life
Recently the ABC online, and the Weekend Australian, both published detailed articles about problems within the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.…
Language
Can ‘difficult’ be used as a verb? Surely not, I hear you mutter. But on the web I encountered the…
The meaning of ‘moot’? It’s debatable
In Florence there was a stone on which Dante sat in the evenings, pondering and talking to acquaintances. One asked…
The science of voting for Kamala Harris
The latest issue of Scientific American, a popular science monthly published by Springer Nature, contains an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris.…
Why women’s golf is better than men’s
In the exhilarating event of Somerset managing to sneak past Surrey and being on their way to claim their first…
Dear Mary: Should you flush the loo in the night when staying with friends?
Q. We live in an area with no mobile reception and trying to get hold of taxis for guests leaving…
As good as Noble Rot: Cloth reviewed
Cloth is opposite St Bartholomew the Great on Cloth Fair. People call this place Farringdon, but it isn’t really: it…
Can I find my tribe in Brighton?
Recently I lost my mother, my job and nearly my wife in quick succession (she was diagnosed with breast cancer).…
The inside track on racing syndicates
Billy Connolly once declared that Scotland had only two seasons: June and winter. Perversely, though, just as the northern swallows…
Have I met my riding friends?
The sound of the little cart on the lane came first and then the sight of the pony clip-clopping towards…
Give vitello tonnato a chance
I am sure there are beloved British dishes that inspire horror in those from different cultures, that are truly unappealing…










































































