The Spectator
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
New York is a difficult place to get a handle on just how the place works. But despite this, every…
Australian Features
Science friction
In recent weeks, we have seen yet another public statement from scientists (in the journal Bioscience) prophesying an approaching climate…
Business/Robbery etc
When BHP changes CEO on January 1, and a practical mining man takes over, hopefully the world’s biggest miner will…
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…
Political correctness kills
On the third of October, 2019, Mickael Harpon went to work at police headquarters on the Île de la Cité…
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…
Frydenberg’s fantasy federalism
Josh Frydenberg, the Treasurer of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, last week wrote an opinion piece in…
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…
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
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…
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…
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…
Venice needs Venexit
Some of Venice’s problems are well known: the challenge of conserving her famous buildings, the dangers of poorly managed mass…
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…
‘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 —…
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
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: 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…
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…
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…
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: 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 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…
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…
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…
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,…
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
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…
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,…
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…
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
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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
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.…
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…
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,…
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…
A fresh approach
Reimagine democracy. Reimagine capitalism. Reimagine education. For all the reimagining thrown at big ideas, they don’t seem much perturbed. You…
no. 581
Bagi–Zvjaginsev, Montenegro 2019. Black to play. 61… Ke6 looks obvious, but Zvjaginsev preferred 61… Rg6! and White resigned instead of…
First or last
In Competition No. 3125 you were invited to compose a comically appalling first or final paragraph of the memoir of…
2435: A little puzzle
Unclued lights, two of two words, are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Elsewhere, ignore two accents. Across 12 …
to 2432: Getting dry
The DODO (30) organised the CAUCUS RACE (12) to get dry. Participants included ALICE (2), EAGLET (7), DUCK (17), MOUSE…
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…
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: 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…
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,…
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.…



































































