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The Spectator

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Climate clown show

At the time of Labor’s election back in 2022, this magazine raised a few eyebrows by suggesting that the brand…

Australian Columnists

Brown Study

Brown study

Before looking at Marvellous Melbourne again, I want to note and praise the decision made yesterday in Washington on the…

Australian Notes

Australian notes

The conflict in Gaza has, paradoxically, caused the greatest problems in Australian public debate for the politically correct class who…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Net zero bandwagon’s wheels are wobbling

As Bowen heads off to another pointless Cop gabfest

Features Australia

Trigger warning: common sense outbreak at UN!

United Nations calls out trans threat to women’s sports

Features Australia

Defeat of the elites

Trump has skewered the expert and advisor class

Features Australia

Net zero defence

Strategic incompetence in the new Great Game

Features Australia

MAD Bill is dead

But is it buried and cremated?

Features Australia

In his father’s footsteps

Robert F. Kennedy Jr intends to clean up America’s act

Features Australia

Hey, Mr Trump, have we got a deal for you

The US and Australia should agree to invest in each other free of corporate tax

Features Australia

Curious parallels

How the elites in Australia & the US always miss the big picture

Features

Features

Will China soon rule the waves?

On Sunday morning, a communications cable between Sweden and Lithuania was damaged, almost certainly deliberately. Just hours later, the C-Lion…

Features

Biden’s missiles will do Ukraine no favours

With just over 60 days left in office, Joe Biden’s White House has significantly escalated the Ukraine war it had…

Notes on...

Babycham is back!

Babycham, the drink you perhaps last sipped while tapping the ash from a black Sobranie as Sade played on the…

Features

Do no harm: the progressive case against assisted dying

Next week, parliament will have its first opportunity to vote on assisted dying in almost a decade. This is a…

Features

Wild Wes: Streeting is causing trouble for Starmer

Avote on assisted dying was supposed to be one of the easiest reforms for Keir Starmer’s government. To many, including…

Features

The Roman roots of the Dulwich Wood Penis Gang

If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise… in Dulwich Wood – a charming…

Features

The Football Governance Bill should be kicked out

What will this government be most remembered for? Ed Miliband’s wind turbines? Assisted dying? Farm bankruptcies? No: rather, I suggest…

Features

The ‘experts’ who enabled RFK Jr’s rise

The nomination of husky-voiced, musclebound Robert F. Kennedy Jr – who once dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park…

Features

‘We want to put common sense into Irish politics’: inside Ireland’s new populist party

When the Taoiseach Simon Harris called a snap election for 29 November, Ireland’s electricity board asked political parties not to…

The Week

Letters

Letters: How to support the dying

Life support Sir: If the Terminally Ill (End of Life) Bill is passed into law we will have crossed the…

Leading article

Rachel Reeves can still repair the damage done to farming

The Chancellor of the Exchequer found time this week to edit her own page on the social media site LinkedIn.…

Diary

Get ready for Elon Musk’s sex robots

My old mucker Donald Trump’s return to the White House has predictably sent the woke brigade into hysteria. From posting…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: Rising inflation, electric car targets and a tax on flatulent livestock

Home Thousands of farmers protested in Westminster against inheritance tax on farms. Tesco, Amazon, Greggs and 76 other chains belonging…

Ancient and modern

There was more to real-life gladiators than fighting

Many commentators have criticised the film Gladiator II on technical aspects of the fighting. But there was so much more…

Columnists

Columns

Am I alone in thinking?

‘Et remarquant que cette vérité, je pense, donc je suis, était si ferme et si assurée, que toutes les plus…

Any other business

What does the City really think of the Chancellor?

Regular invitations to Mansion House banquets petered out after I asked a shifty-looking waiter for a glass of champagne and…

The Spectator's Notes

Farmers aren’t miners

A parallel is being drawn between the Tories and the miners in the 1980s and Labour and the farmers today.…

Columns

Musical chairs at Mar-a-Lago

Welcome to the United States of Disruption. From his ‘Winter White House’ in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Donald Trump has been busy…

Columns

Labour’s Chinese takeaway

I was thrilled to learn that our government intends to enjoy an ‘open’ relationship with China – one of my…

Columns

The true meaning of free speech

Right after Donald Trump’s landslide, I opined on YouTube that this turning point could sound the death knell for Woke…

Columns

Britain’s failing statecraft

I mentioned some weeks ago that one of the great points of interest – not to say enjoyment – in…

Books

More from Books

A shortage of Nigels and other calamities: humorous stocking-fillers

Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Stuart Heritage and Rob Orchard, among others, explore the mysteries and frustrations of modern life

More from Books

A post-Brexit entertainment: The Proof of My Innocence, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed

A satire on radical economic libertarianism combines with a cosy Cotswold murder mystery in an ingenious series of stories within stories

More from Books

We need to learn to pray again

God is real, Rod Dreher insists, and we’re born to be in communion with him. But the focus and mental commitment that prayer requires are impossible if we’re forever doom-scrolling

More from Books

Surviving an abusive mother-daughter relationship

In a dialogue with her younger self, the Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis tries to make sense of her traumatic upbringing at the hands of a repressive, coercive mother

More from Books

The chilly charm of Clarissa Eden

Glamorous, enigmatic and well read, Anthony Eden’s wife was a discreet but unmistakable influence in Downing Street in the mid-1950s

More from Books

A century of Hollywood’s spectacular flops

From D.W. Griffiths’s 1916 epic Intolerance to Tom Hooper’s hilariously misjudged Cats, 26 films provide cautionary examples of mega-budget hubris

More from Books

The boundless curiosity of Oliver Sacks

The neurologist’s diverse interests – from colour blindness to cephalopods – are strikingly evident in letters to family, friends and patients, as well as his unfailing courtesy and compassion

Lead book review

Is it time for Jordan Peterson to declare his spiritual allegiance?

In an outstanding study of the Old Testament, Peterson teases out the inner meaning of one story after another. But though in effect signed up to Christian metaphysics, his beliefs are a mystery

Arts

Australian Arts

Such grandeur in the mind

There’s always something breathtaking about the prices great art can fetch but the sale of Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ at Christie’s…

Radio

Avoids the breathless hype of so many podcasts: Finding Mr Fox reviewed

We are all surely familiar with those stories of naive young Brits who travel abroad and are persuaded by a…

The Listener

Dazzling: Marc-André Hamelin’s Hammerklavier

Grade: A When Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata was published in 1818, pianists were confronted with a mixture of ‘demonic energy and…

Exhibitions

Stimulating little exhibition: Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites reviewed

Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites… there’s an obvious problem here: how do you represent one sense by another?…

Dance

A spectacular failure: Royal Ballet’s MaddAddam reviewed

Adapting ballets out of plot-heavy novels set in fantasy locations and populated with multiple characters is a rubbish idea. The…

Television

How did Wolf Hall escape the attentions of the BBC’s diversity commissars?

Wolf Hall is one of the few remaining jewels in the BBC’s tarnished crown. Presumably that’s why it was allowed…

Pop

What a remarkably bad electric guitar player Bob Dylan is

Finally, a taste of the authentic Bob Dylan live experience. On the two previous occasions that I’ve seen Dylan, in…

Theatre

Heart-warming but safe biographical drama: Going for Gold, at Park90, reviewed

Going for Gold is a biographical drama about a forgotten star of the 1970s. Frankie Lucas was a middleweight boxing…

Cinema

Yes, Anora is as good as everyone says it is

Sean Baker’s Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and is hotly tipped to win big at the Oscars and…

Arts feature

Why is Fauré not more celebrated?

It is 100 years since the death of Gabriel Fauré, a composer whose spellbinding romantic tunes emerge from harmonies and…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

Were you to pop down to the shops and buy a Wagon Wheel these days, chances are you’ll be disappointed.…

Aussie Life

Language

Here’ s a style guide suggestion – it’s time to resurrect the word ‘Aboriginal’. With a lower case ‘a’ this…

Drink

Chilean wine is hard to beat

We were assembled to taste Chilean wines assisted by magnificent Scottish food, courtesy of the Scottish embassy in London, otherwise…

Wild life

The politics of glasses

Africa Orientale Italiana ‘Where did you get those glasses?’ a stylish Italian gentleman asked me, gesturing at the acetate L.G.R.…

No sacred cows

Carry on Kafka: this is our Brave New World

An ex-copper who blogs as Dominic Adler – not his real name – came up with a good phrase this…

Real life

The revenge of the anger management counsellor

‘This is a New York strut,’ said the builder boyfriend as he wedged in place a steel bar, bracing shut…

No life

The uncomfortable truth about boozing

‘Good for you. Amazing. I should do the same.’ ‘You must feel great. Lucky you.’ This is what I hear…

The Wiki Man

Why forcing a return to the office won’t work

The Romans never invented the stirrup. What we call a ‘chest of drawers’ was unknown before the late 17th century…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: How can I avoid a lunge on a date?

Q. I have been working in London as a receptionist in a private members’ club and consequently have had the…

Mind your language

Is ‘Chinatown’ offensive?

I’ve heard people using back-to-back housing to mean terraces separated by back yards. But strictly, back-to-back houses are built against…