The Spectator
22 September 2018 Aus
Tech gurus don’t let their kids have smartphones. Here’s why
Australia
Turnbull’s Costa Concordia
In 2012, the liner Costa Concordia struck a rock just off the Italian coast. The huge ship capsized and sank,…
Australian Columnists
Latham’s law
It’s the iron law of government administration. After a new bureaucracy is established, initially with limited powers and responsibilities, it…
Brown study
The nomination by President Trump of Brett Kavanaugh as a Judge of the Supreme Court of the USA is very…
Racism notes
Taking offence means we all walk on eggshells Recently, a controversial cartoon was drawn of a tennis champion which many…
Conservative notes
The Right is cleaving Take a look at right-of-centre political parties in the Anglosphere. In Canada things are bad, very…
Australian Features
Business/Robbery etc
As disasters go, 9/11 is now much less of a problem for the world than 9/15. There are no widespread…
Dispatches from the conservative frontline
In early 2017, as feminists in pink pussy hats marched in shocked outrage at the election of President Trump, a…
Revenge of the Queen Bees
Three girls in school tunics and battered hats are firing a machine gun in the quad. ‘Girls, girls, a little…
The war of the world
To properly understand the trend of world political events in recent years, it is essential to appreciate that a titanic…
Aux bien pensants
You can’t walk on both sides of the street, PM If the Coalition were to go to the general election…
Features
Tech gurus don’t let their kids have smartphones. Here’s why
Pupils are back in classrooms and parents can finally have a brief respite from worrying about their children’s excessive screen…
When did advertising become so banal?
Walking down the street on my lunch break, I sometimes pass a delivery man wheeling a large handcart of Japanese…
How Orbán duped the Brexiteers
To the inhabitants of the British Isles, the nations of central Europe have always existed in a semi–mythical space, near…
Corbyn dares to be different – why don’t other MPs?
One of the better plays at the National Theatre in recent weeks has been about a 21st-century banker, Judy, who…
Welcome to the hard centre – and the future of British politics
The Conservative party has to move beyond Brexit and leaders: what is it going to be about? I suggest it…
James Cleverly: the Tories are to blame for Corbyn
As Labour gathers for its conference in Liverpool this weekend, the Conservatives will be watching with trepidation, rather than the…
Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell was just fiction. Here are the facts
One of the many pleasures of writing the life of Thomas Cromwell was to reach out behind the various versions…
Second best: Why runners up are more interesting than those who come first
Who was the second prime minister? Everyone knows Robert Walpole was the first. Firsts get all the fame and glory.…
The Week
Trade wars: The method behind Donald Trump’s madness
Donald Trump campaigned as an unrepentant protectionist and, on the face of it, he has lived up to his word.…
Portrait of the Week: Brexitry, Jaguar and the Lib-Dems’ non-leader
Home Britain was overwhelmed by Brexitry. Before flying off to an EU summit in Salzburg, Theresa May, the Prime Minister,…
Max Hastings’s diary
The Hastingses have idyllic lives but, like most seventysomethings, we find ourselves in ever-closer proximity to mortality. We hold season…
How much does it cost to cryogenically freeze a person (or a pet)?
Trans mission Equalities Minister Penny Mordaunt ordered research into a huge rise in referrals of under-18 girls to transgender services.…
The EU’s divide and rule
‘Divide and rule’ (or ‘conquer’) diplomacy aims to disunite the opposition, the better to control it. The ancients were masters…
Australian letters
Flying circus Sir: Congratulations on 10 years of The Speccie Oz. As you note in your editorial, your contributors have…
Columnists
Forget hard and soft Brexit – we’re heading for a blind Brexit
Brexit won’t be over by 29 March 2019. Britain will legally leave the European Union on that date. But that…
Men and women are born equal but different. Deal with it
I was delighted to see Claire Foy win an Emmy award for her portrayal of the Queen in the fine…
15 reasons to fall in love with Germany and Germans
Things I learned about the Germans after a fortnight living as a non–tourist in Frankfurt: 1. Germans, and Germany…
Jaguar’s boss isn’t scaremongering. The UK car industry is in big trouble
‘I’m afraid I think he’s making it up,’ was the retort of Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin on Monday’s Today…
Books
Helen Parr’s intimate portrait of the Parachute Regiment – Our Boys – captures the essence of modern Britain
On the night of 13 June 1982, Dave Parr was hit by shellfire on Wireless Ridge. He was 19, a…
The history of Britain’s secret war on Napoleon is astonishing, inspiring and disturbing
Laws and sausages, we know, are better not seen in the making; and neither are ‘black ops’. Waterloo may have…
Good first novels without ends leave one wanting more
Novels today do not want to be done. Thank Anthony Burgess and John Fowles for this, most immediately, but alternate…
Two legal big hitters consider the appropriate distribution of governmental power in Britain
Sir Stephen Sedley read English at Cambridge and Lord Dyson Classics at Oxford. Both switched to law and achieved high…
Julie Burchill is bored by Robin Green’s account of her time at Rolling Stone – and says hippies still stink
The last time I saw a copy of the New Musical Express — the ferociously influential 1970s pop paper which…
Two new books explore the triumphs and tribulations of an underrated king – Henry II
Poor old Henry II: once fêted as one of England’s greatest kings, he has long been neglected. Accessible books on…
Humans are animals, and our extinction is inevitable – but we’re still pretty amazing
Ever since enlivenment of the primordial blob, before thoughts were first verbalised, all nature has always been motivated by a…
![‘Achilles has a dispute with Agamemnon [following Briseis being taken away, and Achilles refusing to fight until she is returned]’, J.H. Tischbein, 1776, oil on canvas. (Bridgeman Images)](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/achillies.jpg?w=730&h=486&crop=1)
Pat Barker travels to Troy, but finds herself diverted somewhere outside Ypres
Sing muse, begins The Iliad, of the wrath of Achilles. We are dropped straight into the tenth year of the…
Kate Atkinson’s new novel Transcription asks us how carefully we are paying attention
Transcription, Kate Atkinson’s 11th novel, sees her returning to the detective fiction she honed in her series about Jackson Brodie,…
My grandmother’s perfect pub – a memoir by Laura Thompson
As an emigrant from Scotland, I was taken aback by the weird foreignness of the south of England. Some of…
Paul Ewen’s Francis Plug is the saviour of comic fiction
Such was the perceived low standard of the 62 books recently submitted for the 2018 Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction,…
Disturbing
‘There was no body. There was no wrench. There was no evidence.’ The first two statements are undoubtedly true. Lawyers…
Arts
A brief history of unicorns
After the England football team beat Tunisia at this summer’s World Cup, they celebrated with a swimming-pool race on inflatable…
The night I kissed Harold Pinter
I think everyone was a little nervous of Harold. Including Harold, sometimes. He was affable, warm, generous, impulsive — and…
Rattle’s recapitulation: LSO/Simon Rattle at Barbican reviewed
A pregnant silence, a peaty belch from the tuba, and the scrape of brass on brass as gears lock into…
Blacktivist rhetoric and impenetrable symbols: Misty reviewed
Arinzé Kene’s play Misty is a collection of rap numbers and skits about a fare dodger, Lucas, from Hackney. Lucas…
The Spanish artist who is more gruesome even than Caravaggio
Last year my wife and I were wandering around the backstreets of Salamanca when we were confronted by a minor…
As a writer, Richard Wagner was both sublime – and unreadable
No one any longer denies the immense significance of Wagner’s musical-dramatic achievement, even if they find it repellent. But his…
Authenticity over artistry: Brushes with War reviewed
The first world war paintings of Paul Nash are so vivid and emotive that they have come to embody, as…
The invisible woman of French cinema: Faces Places reviewed
Faces Places is a documentary directed by Agnès Varda in collaboration with JR, the famous Parisian photographer and muralist (although,…
Camp, preposterous and weirdly good fun: Killing Eve reviewed
After the all-conquering success of Fleabag — her brilliant dark comedy about a smart but rudderless young woman in London…
Kate Morton
She was born in a small town in South Australia, later grew up on Tamborine Mountain and, when aged barely…
Life
An audience with the Pope
Perception and reality, truth and falsehood, black and white; nowadays the salivating chattering classes don’t know their arse from a…
A foretaste of Frexit
Moving day. The contents of a hillside shack to be moved four miles to a cave house perched high on…
Why my lodger has to be a girl
The little lodger is moving in. I chose her after an exhaustive search of twentysomethings looking for accommodation, during which…
Interregnum
The only official interregnum in the reigns of the world chess champions was that between the death of Alekhine in…
no. 524
Black to play. This position is from Gurgenidze-Tal, Moscow 1957. What is the most direct way to break into the…
This sporting life
In Competition No. 3066 you were invited to submit an ode to a piece of sporting equipment. There is a…
2377: In order
The dozen unclued lights can be arranged in a specific sequence when preceded by or followed by their sequence indicators…
to 2374: Watch your step
The unclued lights are DANCES. First prize K.J. Williams, Kings Worthy, Winchester. Runners-up Bridget Workman, Purley;C.S.G Elengorn, Enfield.
It’s as I suspected – my defects can’t be cured
I’ve just finished making a one-hour documentary about character for Radio 4 that’s due to be broadcast on Saturday at…
Is there a limit to what the human body can do?
Has the world gone mad? There’s Beauden Barrett, the world’s best stand-off, and rugby player of the year seemingly by…
Dear Mary: Our insufferable children are rounding on our eightysomething neighbour
Q. A neighbour, a wonderful old friend in his late eighties, is a marvellous raconteur. As a family we have…
It is essentially a crap Le Gavroche, and that is not an insult: Roux at Parliament Square reviewed
Politicians are having a terrible time of late, along with the rest of us — it’s not much fun watching…
Why ‘whiter than white’shouldn’t get you suspended
A detective superintendent has been placed on ‘restricted duties’ while the Independent Office for Police Conduct investigates a complaint that…
