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The Spectator

23 November 2019 Aus

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Political insanity

As the bushfires rage, and a long, hot, dry and fiery summer seems inevitable, it’s well past time for Australia…

Australian Columnists

Brown Study

Brown study

New York is a difficult place to get a handle on just how the place works. But despite this, every…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Science friction

In recent weeks, we have seen yet another public statement from scientists (in the journal Bioscience) prophesying an approaching climate…

Features Australia

Business/Robbery etc

When BHP changes CEO on January 1, and a practical mining man takes over, hopefully the world’s biggest miner will…

Features Australia

Close encounters of the royal kind

Prince Andrew has a dangerous habit of trusting the wrong people. Like Emily Maitlis. Why the prince put his faith…

Features Australia

Political correctness kills

On the third of October, 2019, Mickael Harpon went to work at police headquarters on the Île de la Cité…

Features Australia

Yes, we have a truth emergency

Last Monday the Australian described ABC journos organising a ‘solutions journalism’ approach to what they call the ‘climate crisis’. This…

Features Australia

Frydenberg’s fantasy federalism

Josh Frydenberg, the Treasurer of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, last week wrote an opinion piece in…

Features Australia

When woke comes to town

The Australian leg of U2’s Joshua Tree tour is almost over and everyone can relax. Bono will slip his clothes…

Features Australia

Water, water everywhere

These words from Coleridge’s great poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, could have been the theme of the 2018…

Features

Features

Remain’s last stand: the collapse of the anti-Brexit campaign

Ever since the referendum, the two strongest political forces in Britain have been Leave and Remain. Loyalty to political parties…

Features

How a PR guru hijacked the People’s Vote campaign

I have enough self-awareness to know that the public are unlikely to care too much about a spat between a…

Features

Hare coursing gangs are terrorising the countryside

If you’re driving at dawn or at dusk in the countryside at this time of year, you might well see…

Features

Venice needs Venexit

Some of Venice’s problems are well known: the challenge of conserving her famous buildings, the dangers of poorly managed mass…

Features

Iceland’s melting glaciers are nothing to panic about

Is Iceland on the global warming front line? You’d be forgiven for thinking so. We’ve all seen the documentaries where…

Features

‘Instapoetry’ may be popular, but most of it is terrible

Poetry is on a hot streak. Last year, sales in the UK topped £12 million for the first time —…

Notes on...

Starling murmurations are a display more dazzling than fireworks

It’s late afternoon in the car park of Workington Asda. A little crowd is gathering in one corner, most of…

The Week

Leading article

The Tories must be careful not to pave the way for Corbynism

To say one thing for John McDonnell, he shows a refreshing preparedness to use a general election to lay out…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: The leaders’ debate, the Duke’s interview and the gilet jaunes’ birthday

Home In a television debate Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, was jeered by the studio audience when he was asked…

Diary

George Osborne: The temptation of voting Lib Dem

Going to Pizza Express is a very usual thing for me to do, unlike Prince Andrew. I grew up in…

Barometer

What happened to the other Dukes of York?

Old Dukes of York Prince Andrew is the 14th royal to have held the title Duke of York (three were…

Ancient and modern

The ancients were aware that there’s more to making speeches than just words

Cicero said that the good orator could arouse in the listener many different feelings: ‘delight, grief, laughter, tears, admiration, hatred,…

Letters

Letters: The Politically Homeless Party are now a force to be reckoned with

Nowhere to turn Sir: Like Tanya Gold and Matthew Parris (9 November), I too am feeling politically homeless. Over the…

Columnists

The Spectator's Notes

The silence of the Scottish unionists

We citizens of the small Sussex village of Etchingham are proud of our clan chief, Julie, who chaired Tuesday night’s…

Rod Liddle

Get ready for the Great Lammy Firewall

Many of you will be waiting, with much excitement, for the Great Lammy Firewall, which will be introduced by our…

Matthew Parris

What on earth are the Lib Dems up to?

Jo Swinson is right. Most of the gains that it’s worth her party aiming for would be made at the…

Lionel Shriver

Labour’s real 2019 manifesto

In 2019, Labour’s strategy is about delivering a fairer, more prosperous society, in adherence to our motto: for the zany,…

Any other business

Even Elon Musk thinks Brexit Britain is a risky prospect

Having been awarded the title of business editor of this paper by Boris Johnson in his former incarnation, I know…

Books

Lead book review

The carnage inside Charlie Hebdo: an eyewitness’s account of the attack

It is almost five years since two trained jihadists went into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and killed…

Books, Children's books

Angels and daemons: Children’s books for Christmas

Sometimes I have to admit the reason I read children’s books with pleasure is that I’m essentially puerile —and look,…

Books

Capturing the mood of the English landscape: the genius of John Nash

‘If I wanted to make a foreigner understand the mood of a typical English landscape,’ the art critic Eric Newton…

Books

Make it an applefest this Christmas — the best of the year’s cookbooks

If it were not for a banker with a hangover, we would not have Eggs Benedict. Or so one of…

Arts

Arts feature

Meet the unrivalled Sun King of early music, William Christie

It’s morning in the garden of William Christie, and he’s talking about home improvements. ‘I planted three pines up there…

Arts

The Queen, and indeed the British public, deserve better than The Crown’s lies

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge recently met with survivors of national disasters. They were attending the launch of a…

Exhibitions

The extraordinary paintings of Craigie Aitchison

One of the most extraordinary paintings in the exhibition of work by Craigie Aitchison at Piano Nobile (96–129 Portland Road,…

Television

War of the Worlds is as bad as Doctor Who

Edwardian England deserved everything it got from those killer Martian invaders. Or so I learned from the BBC’s latest adaptation…

Music

Ravishing and poignant: ENO’s Orphée reviewed

Billy Wilder, asked for his opinion of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of his movie Sunset Boulevard, famously replied: ‘Those…

Pop

Range and power – and amazingly she sang all her songs: Christina Aguilera at Wembley reviewed

In every respect bar its austere pews, the Union Chapel is one of the best venues in London: beautiful and…

Theatre

Riveting and beautifully staged analysis of totalitarianism: Arcola’s #WeAreArrested reviewed

When the RSC does modern drama it usually lays on an ultra-worthy yarn with a huge cast, dozens of fancy…

Culture Buff

William Dobell “Woman in a Salon (Helena Rubinstein)” 1960

She was a girl from Coleraine who became the world’s first self made multi-millionairess. Born in Krakôw, Poland in1872, she…

Life

High life

The cops are impotent in lawless New York

New York   Things are heating up, in both London and Nueva York, as this place should correctly be called.…

Low life

The lessons I learned cycling across Rwanda

The backmarker of the peloton was Eric, a tall, stick-thin Rwandan. Under his cycling helmet he wore a baseball cap…

Real life

How you can tell the gender of a thief

My attempt at being Columbo was only taking me so far. In solving the mystery of who raided the barn,…

The turf

Cheltenham was the perfect antidote to election politics

I can only be sorry for the 67,496,581 citizens of the UK who were not at Cheltenham last Saturday. For…

Bridge

Bridge

Well, it has taken 12 years, two relegations, one second place and endless ‘nowheres’ playing the Premier League and we…

Chess

A fresh approach

Reimagine democracy. Reimagine capitalism. Reimagine education. For all the reimagining thrown at big ideas, they don’t seem much perturbed. You…

Chess puzzle

no. 581

Bagi–Zvjaginsev, Montenegro 2019. Black to play. 61… Ke6 looks obvious, but Zvjaginsev preferred 61… Rg6! and White resigned instead of…

Competition

First or last

In Competition No. 3125 you were invited to compose a comically appalling first or final paragraph of the memoir of…

Crossword

2435: A little puzzle

Unclued lights, two of two words, are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Elsewhere, ignore two accents.   Across 12   …

Crossword solution

to 2432: Getting dry

The DODO (30) organised the CAUCUS RACE (12) to get dry. Participants included ALICE (2), EAGLET (7), DUCK (17), MOUSE…

No sacred cows

Prince Andrew should have married someone like my wife

Like many people, I watched Prince Andrew’s Newsnight meltdown with mounting disbelief. Why had he agreed to do it? It…

The Wiki Man

No one else has the weird levels of self-regard shown by people who appear regularly on TV

One of the more tedious tropes of recent years is for journalists to bemoan the rise of populism while busily…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: How do I stop my husband eating everything in the fridge?

Q. A friend of a friend has an apartment in Venice. I would like to commiserate with her about the…

Drink

Wine that puts politics in its place

In the era of vinyl, lost in one of Bruckner’s longueurs, it could be hard to tell what was stuck,…

Mind your language

From Pliny to poetry: the history of ‘ictus’ and ‘ductus’

‘I know the difference between ictal and icteric,’ said my husband proudly, reminding me of Tweedledum in Through the Looking-Glass.…