The Spectator
Australia
Chalumbin, the New Franklin
Four decades after the battle for the Franklin Dam, a contest between nature and industry is underway in the high…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
One of the many issues that people have difficulty understanding about the Aboriginal Voice is whether it will lead to…
Australian Features
The hottest day
Temperatures have been rising and falling for the last 600 million years
Dutton must fight for free speech
Labor’s disinformation bill is deeply dangerous
The government, my enemy
A journalist records Covidian Australia's pandemic over-reach
China’s economy is stalling
The country’s economic splutter will be noticed around the world
Live not by lies
Australian institutions are so hostile to freedom that telling the truth is an act of resistance
Albo’s Chinese takeaway
Labor’s misinformation bill is what you’d expect Beijing to ram through in Hong Kong
Features
Letter from Thailand
Many of my friends, stranded by the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes, have temporarily given up their film projects and…
Pebbles
P-p-pick up a pebble. Feel its weight in your palm. Roll it over under your thumb. Any good? Not sure?…
The Week
Held to account
When Nigel Farage said Coutts had closed his bank account and claimed political victimisation, many thought he was making it…
Portrait of the week
Home Ben Wallace said he would cease to be the Defence Secretary at the next cabinet reshuffle and would not…
Rumour-mongers
The ancients were as fascinated by rumour as, to judge by recent events in Russia and the BBC, we are.…
Columnists
Labour’s reality check
Rishi Sunak goes into the summer holidays in the same position he began the year: 20 points behind in the…
The Spectator’s Notes
Jane Portal, as she was when she worked for Winston Churchill, died last week, aged 93. Lady Williams of Elvel,…
The BBC’s biggest problem
As I write this, the director-general of the BBC is being quizzed on the corporation’s future by people who were…
Canada’s lovely, liberal solution
My favourite Martin Amis novel was his 1991 book Time’s Arrow. It is a pyrotechnically brilliant work in which all…
‘There is no plan! You’re on your own!’
The first LNER train I booked on Sunday from Durham to London was cancelled due to ‘action short of a…
Reasons to be cheerful? Yes, I think I see some
‘Always be cheerful’ – a motto to which I’ll return in the final item – speaks to my natural demeanour.…
Books
Humour and harmony
A successful joke relies on rhythm, tempo, cadence, pause – so why does David Stubbs find comedy and music so antithetical, wonders Joel Morris
Tales to tell
Despite the seediness and threat of violence, Littlehampton was a place of neighbourly camaraderie, fondly evoked in Sally Bayley’s latest memoir
Man for hire
Shoji Morimoto offers himself to strangers in Tokyo to queue on their behalf, make a fuss of their dogs or simply provide a human presence
Private obsessions
A world of private fetishes, obsessions, childhood memories and literary passions is dazzlingly revealed in 13 short stories
The glory of Jamaican music
Abandoned in infancy, Alex Wheatle grew up in children’s homes, but found salvation in roots reggae – and, eventually, his father in Jamaica
The trouble with mothers
Simpson writes from personal experience in this moving story of three children’s commitment to their mentally ill mother
Tabloid fever
A tabloid journalist desperate for a scoop pursues a young Irish mother whose daughter is rumoured to have killed a child. But is there any truth in the story?
Travellers’ tales
In the absence of their own written records, they have been ‘invented’ and misrepresented in Europe ever since their arrival in the Middle Ages, says Klaus-Michael Bogdal
The work that’s never done
Like many women in mid-life, Marina Benjamin found herself caring for the very young and the elderly – leading her to ‘a radical feminist turn’
Ancient stalemate
History is always relevant, says Adrian Goldsworthy – and Rome’s long war with Parthia-Persia, ending in deadlock, should make Putin wary
Terrorist friends and relatives
When a Sri Lankan medical student finds her brothers joining the Tamil Tigers, she is caught in a tangle of commitments to family, friends, homeland and vocation
Arts
The brutality of ballet
Despite #MeToo and the new resistance to male bullying, the dance world is still ferocious and unforgiving, writes Rupert Christiansen
Heaven knows they’re miserable now
Bands that have hung around, or gone away and come back again, occupy an increasingly sizeable percentage of pop’s bandwidth.…
Pain without gain
It is the stuff of nightmares, or a queasily dystopian film plot. A woman is undergoing a surgical procedure in…
Rewriting history
If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…
Comrades in arms
There were times during last Friday’s First Night of the Proms when it felt as if we’d been transported back…
Catching the zeitgeist
‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and…
Feminist phooey
Finally, the Barbie film is here, for which we must be thankful, as the tsunami of pre-publicity meant you probably…
Kundera’s last laugh
So now Milan Kundera is gone at the age of 94. It’s easy to forget the tremendous weight, the sheer…
Life
Aussie life
Standing on the banks of the Swan River the skyline tells you how Perth retains observable links with its regional…
Language
Some trendy new expressions will probably have the lifespan of a fruit fly (for the scientifically minded, that’s between 30…
French tomato tart
Last year, we grew tomatoes for the first time. And we did so with our characteristic enthusiasm, lack of knowledge…
I need a holiday from my holiday
Reading about all the travel chaos, I began to regret my summer holiday plans. Wouldn’t it have been more sensible…
A summer of thrillers
Great sport needs great rivalries, and that is why anyone with a pulse must celebrate being in the throes of…
First draught
I am not sure the vast Bierschenke bierkeller in Covent Garden is successful, even if it is skilful: I worry…
Vape
Last year, Oxford Languages’ word of the year was goblin mode. Apparently 300,000 voters decided upon it, but I haven’t…
Puzzle no. 761
White to play. Rapport-Caruana, Grand Chess Tour Rapid, Zagreb 2023. Caruana’s last move, 61…Bd6-e7, was a decisive mistake. Which move…
Travellers’ tales
In Competition No. 3208 you were invited to submit a short story whose first or last line is: ‘“Is there…
2614: Monkey business
Unclued lights (one of three words and one of two words, singly or paired) form three groups. Group 1 is three…
2611: On-board entertainment
Unclued lights were world CHESS champions. Current champion DING was to be highlighted. First prize Gail Petrie, Brean, Somerset Runners-up…













































































