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The Spectator

23 April 2016 Aus

Deconstructing Greer

Now the Left are turning on a feminist icon

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Should, could, would

Here’s what should happen. The Coalition, led by Malcolm Turnbull, should win the forthcoming July 2 election with a slightly…

Australian Columnists

Simon Collins

Simon Collins

Given the popularity of Channel 10’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here it’s hardly surprising that other networks…

Australian Notes

Australian notes

Same sex marriage? just give me Democracy There are few conceivable contexts whereby one could say ‘I believe in democracy’…

Diary Australia

Campus diary

I have always firmly believed that the role of a university is to foster scholarly pursuits. To those who have…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Fallen idol

Germaine Greer falls foul of the speech-policing tranny state

Features Australia

Racism, aussie style

It’s a common enough accusation - but what does it actually mean?

Features Australia

The race for the UN’s top job

We should care about who is the next Secretary-General - and it shouldn’t be Kevin Rudd

Features Australia

Deconstructing Greer

Now the Left are turning on a feminist icon

Features

Features

Obama’s overreach

The British politicians counting on his endorsement don’t understand the resentment he can cause

Features

He speaks for America

Disagree with him if you like. But don’t underestimate his support — or the strength of his case

Features

How to save Conservatism

The former Work and Pensions Secretary on the fallout from his shock resignation

Features

A poem for Erdogan

There is a prize of £1,000 – so start composing your foul verses

Features

The fairytale factory

Rags to Riches, and other archetypal plots coming soon to a stadium near you

Features

My wild place

The wildlife is thriving around my little tin house. I’m less sure about the people

Features

The game of the name

More girls are now being named Luna or Skylar than Mary. What’s up?

Features

Stress point

All I need is a clear job description, mastery of my space, and the absence of a ‘team’ that is ‘on my side’

Strange fruit: Bosch mixes scripture and folklore

Notes on...

The delights of Hieronymus Bosch

It’s best if they’re not prone to nightmares, obviously

The Week

Leading article

Cut the claptrap

Is it too late to hope that both sides might start treating voters as adults?

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor, said that if Britain left the European Union, households would be on average £4,300 a…

Diary

Diary

Also in Robert Hardman’s diary: the future of royal walkabouts, and the return of the airship

Barometer

Barometer

Also in our Barometer column: Treasury forecasts, the Queen and life expectancy, and pay at the top

Ancient and modern

The Treasury’s prophecies

Roman auspices were probably more reliable than Treasury forecasts

(Photo: Getty)

From The Archives

Duty calls

He will otherwise become ‘a proper object of public censure and contempt’

Letters

Australian letters

Navy sunk Sir: As a proud ex-Wren during World War ll, I heartily endorse your editorial on the Royal Australian…

Columnists

World Politics

Cameron’s heading for a hollow victory

In winning the vote, he could well lose his party

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s notes

And: Simon Danczuk’s ‘dark place’; public appointments; Matt Ridley; David Pryce-Jones; university standards

Rod Liddle

Moderate Muslims are not particularly moderate

There is an ocean between what British Muslims believe and what the rest of us believe

James Delingpole

Oxford in my day was another, better world

We were never being boring – but we knew how to be self-disciplined and rigorous

Any other business

If you’re riding the FTSE rebound you might still want to sell in May

Also in Any Other Business: Brexit forecasts, renationalising steel, the future of hotels and Standard Chartered

Books

The interior of the Swan Theatre, Southwark, in 1596, based on a sketch by a Dutch traveller, Johannes de Witt, and probably the best indicator of what the Globe Theatre would have looked like.

Lead book review

A mirror to the world

The latest crop of anniversary books shows just what an astonishing mirror to changing culture his work can be

‘Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh...’ (From The Merchant of Venice)

Books

Get thee to a notary

John Kerrigan’s examination of the many vows, oaths, promises, pledges and profanities contained in Shakespeare’s plays provides further rewarding reading

Books

When in Rome…

Roberto Bolaño’s ‘novelita’ of orphaned siblings and mute lookalikes planning a crime spree in Rome ends in a strange red glow of ambiguity

Books

Two gone girls

When a cold case of child-murder is reopened, the investigator’s own daughter goes missing in Hideo Yokoyama’s spellbinding thriller, Six Four

Male bowerbirds’ creations look like little art galleries — built to impress the females

Books

Not so bird-brained after all

One’s a perfect genius and the other’s a perfect mystery, say Jennifer Ackerman and Tim Birkhead, in two enthralling new books on bird behaviour

Books

More blood and tears

After a spell of clean living in Santa Barbara, Renton’s frenemy returns to Edinburgh, and more carnage, in Irvine Welsh’s The Blade Artist

Books

Thetans under threat

Lawrence Wright’s astonishing exposé of Scientology, which appeared in the States in 2013, has finally found a brave British publisher

The obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. Its transport from Luxor to Paris took seven years and involved the destruction of an entire village

Books

Symbols of eternity

Bob Brier reveals how most of these great symbols of eternity, now lost to Egypt, have ended up in the Eternal City

Arts

Going Dutch: Eelco Smits and Janni Goslinga of Toneelgroep Amsterdam in ‘Kings of War’

Arts feature

All the world’s a stage

Kings of War is the brainchild of Belgian director Ivo van Hove, who explains why Shakespeare is often much more dramatic when not done in English

 

Narrative feature

Death and the Bard

The cause of the Bard’s demise has always been pretty shadowy. Some say he died of fever, others syphilis. Lloyd Evans examines the evidence

The Heckler

Shakespeare400

Shakespeare400 has made the playwright into a brand, an icon to be name-checked but rarely grappled with

Opera

Whose opera is it anyway?

Obscurity is the order of the week: London Handel Festival offer up Handel's pasticcio Elpidia and oratorio Alexander Balus, while London Mozart Players reconstruct Mozart's Goose of Cairo

‘True Love’ detail, 1981, by Posy Simmonds

Exhibitions

Picture books for grown-ups

On its 10th anniversary, the Cartoon Museum celebrates an underrated art form in which the British excel, as demonstrated by the works of Posy Simmonds and Bryan Talbot

A feast of Mexicanismo: Tamara Rojo as Frida Kahlo in ‘Broken Wings’

Dance

The female gaze

In the battle between men and women choreographers, the Mariinsky’s all-male line-up at the Millennium Centre won out over Rojo’s She Said triple at ENB

Caption – Natalie Portman in Jane Got a Gun

Cinema

There may be trouble ahead

The difference is at least Daphne doesn't expect me to sit and watch her for 98 minutes

Martin Neely as Jeremy Corbyn and Natasha Lewis as Diane Abbott

Theatre

The Jezza effect

This improbable scenario is the only weak link in Corbyn the Musical at Waterloo East. Plus: Boy at the Almeida is the finest homily on alienation I've ever witnessed

Devastation after the collapse of the Twin Towers (Photo: Getty)

Radio

Written on the body

Plus: the World Service's interview series Where Are You Going? is a simple format that stumbles upon powerful stories

Inside the Portland Hospital

Television

Special delivery

Plus: how was it that BBC2's The People v OJ Simpson continued to grip despite us knowing the outcome of the story?

Culture Buff

Helen Garner

True crime is the genre of literature based on actual crimes and the real life perpetrators. Initially popularised in the…

Life

High life

High life

Legality being my middle name, I followed advice to steer well clear of the likes of Mossack Fonseca

Low life

Low life

My future prosperity depended on us beating Manchester United in the cup quarter final— but then we lost

Real life

Real life

The estate agent selling it seemed reluctant to do so

Long life

Long life

A recent referendum there shows how, if you ask people to answer a stupid question, most will refuse to do so

Wild life

Wild life

People would then start ranching elephants instead of poaching them — and you could feed half a million people with the elephant meat currently going to waste

Bridge

Bridge

Bridge is such an unforgiving game; you can’t afford to take your eye off the ball for a single moment.…

Chess

The Godfather

It is often asked how chess became so popular in the USSR. My answer is that most areas of creative…

Chess puzzle

No. 405

White to play. This position is from Vallejo-Wynn, Bangkok 2016. White has sacrificed a rook and a bishop. He now…

Competition

Much ado about nothing?

In Competition No. 2944 you were invited to imagine what characters from Shakespeare’s plays would have made of this year’s…

Crossword

2257: A spree

An excerpt from a poem (-eleven words, one hyphened, in ODQ) reads clockwise in the perimeter from the top left…

Crossword solution

To 2254: Ecofriendly

To create entries at 5, 9, 20, 29D and 41, answers to clues in italics become TREE-HUGGERS (15), embracing sallow,…

Status anxiety

Long may we laugh at our absurd demagogues

We are almost the only nation to defy Edmund Burke’s pessimism about democracy

The Wiki Man

How to do better at darts – and life

Stop trying to maximise your results by going for the bullseye

Dear Mary

Your problems solved

Plus: the troublesome case of the thank-you letter signed ‘C’

Drink

Riders and diners

And a hot tip on claret houses’ second wines

Mind your language

Sex worker

The term has been in uneasy company since its first recorded appearance