The Spectator
26 January 2019 Aus
Australia
Silence of the Lambassador
It’s beyond embarrassing, it’s humiliating. But more importantly, it is the perfect metaphor for how the values of mainstream Australia…
Australian Columnists
Simon Collins
Underpinning Orwell’s most chilling dystopian vision was the belief that controlling what people say is half way to controlling what…
Brown study
This column has now embarked on a series of articles to prepare you for the coming election season. Our policy…
Blasphemy notes
Affection for the Prophet more than for life itself The plight of the Pakistani Christian woman known as Asia Bibi…
Australian Features
Lefty francophiles
What is it about left-leaning elites (so the significant preponderance of today’s ‘elite’ class) and France? It’s hard not to…
Clive spends big on Clive
Is it possible to buy your way into the federal parliament? It seems that we are about to find out…
The Left’s heart of darkness
When detailing the origins of the culture wars the British conservative politician Michael Gove refers to the establishment of the…
The problem with ‘right of return’
The United Nations Global Compact on Migration has brought issues relating to migrants and refugees to the fore for many…
Everything is… just fine
‘Britain in worst crisis since WWII,’ declared the Australian’s front page last Thursday. ‘Britain’s state of dismay,’ professed the Age’s…
Raise a glass to the British
Despite years of federal civics education courses, a survey taken some years ago revealed that the vast majority of school…
Features
The war on meat has begun – and vegans are winning comfortably
As January — the month of penitence and tax returns — grinds towards its close, it would be foolish to…
Looking for a guilt-free vegetable? Good luck with that
Last week’s Lancet report and its ‘planetary health diet’ of next to no red meat will have bolstered the egos…
Britain has fallen out of love with Italy – as have the Italians
On reading recently that Italian is the fastest disappearing language in America, my thoughts were mixed. I felt fleeting sorrow…
Mugabe mark II: Why Mnangagwa’s rule in Zimbabwe may not last very long
Ten days ago, Zimbabwe’s President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, hiked the price of petrol by 250 per cent, making it the most…
Justin Welby: Catholic or Protestant – who cares?
Justin Welby is working in Thomas Cranmer’s old study in Lambeth Palace, a room that looks as if it hasn’t…
Davos diary: A party conference for the guilty rich
Somehow I had managed more than a quarter of a century in journalism without ever going to Davos. It had…
Britain might run out of top-class judges
When I was called to the Bar in 1967, the aim was to be appointed as a judge to the…
In Constable’s ascension, Jesus just looks quite awkward
Constable painted only three religious paintings, and when you see the one in St Mary’s Church in Dedham you realise…
The Week
Dyson’s move shows he thinks the Brexit opportunity will be squandered
If knighthoods could be removed by vote of parliament, Sir James Dyson would be first in line. Knighted for being…
Portrait of the week: May’s Brexit Plan B, IRA bombs and no one goes to Davos
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, having survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence, came to the Commons with an…
In defence of Fiona Bruce
Will I be allowed to take my dog to Europe after 29 March? A trivial question, you might think, in…
Letters: my autism is a challenge, not an affliction
Autistic freedom Sir: Jonathan Mitchell, an autistic writer, argues that autism is an affliction and that a cure should be…
Columnists
When ‘politician’ is the biggest insult of them all
This column has laughed before at the BBC’s satirical wit in having a slot called ‘Reality Check’ on Brexit. If…
Brexit goes back to the backstop
As the prime minister walks up the main staircase in No. 10, he or she must pass the portrait of…
Even in moderate Malaysia, anti-Semitism is rife
The question I had hoped to pose this week was this: ‘Do people dislike Diane Abbott because she is black…
The scent of London has changed: all I can smell now is cannabis
Fewer people are smoking cannabis these days, down to 1.4 million from two million, they say. I say, if you…
No luxury has ever disappointed me as much as my wood-burning stove
When I first heard rumours that Michael Gove was planning to go round the country with his environmental Gestapo, ripping…
Nobody who’s anybody was at Davos this year. Here’s why
Nobody who’s anybody is in Davos this week and, as usual, neither am I. World leaders from Donald Trump to…
Books
The scramble for Africa goes back many centuries
A thought kept recurring as I read Toby Green’s fascinating and occasionally frustrating book on the development of West Africa…
Will we ever unravel the mysteries of Kabbalah?
In an age where ‘authenticity’ is prized above all things (even if what this actually means is that — like,…
Auberon Waugh — a demon on the page, an angel off it
Auberon Waugh was happy to admit that most journalism is merely tomorrow’s chip paper but, of all the journalists of…
The internet was never intended to spy on us
There is a trend in non-fiction — in fact my editor has been on to me about this lately —…
The unimportance of Ernest Hemingway: why should we bother reading him anymore?
What is the most repulsive sentence in English/American literature? Even as a 12-year-old American boy, I cringed when reading, in…
One hundred years on, could we cope with a new flu pandemic?
Do you remember the swine flu panic a decade ago? Jeremy Brown, the author of this book, describes it here.…
Beware the female stalker: Dream Sequence, by Adam Foulds, reviewed
Adam Foulds’s fourth novel, Dream Sequence, is an exquisitely concocted, riveting account of artistic ambition and unrequited love verging on…
The ghostly Thames: Once Upon a River, by Diane Setterfield, reviewed
While its shape is famous — prominent on maps of London and Oxford — the Thames is ‘unmappable’, according to…
Train journeys may be losing their romance — but there are other adventures still to be had
Monisha Rajesh wrote lovingly about the Indian railways in her previous book, Around India in 80 Trains; but her new…
Leftist wonderland
Kerry O’Brien in his mammoth memoir argues that his decades of ABC TV presenting were not Left-biased. It’s an easy…
Arts
All About Eve was all about bitching – off-screen as well as on
In 1950, Bette Davis had a string of recent flops behind her. She was 41, married to an embarrassing twerp…
A facile indulgence: Pinter Six reviewed
The cast of Party Time includes John Simm, Celia Imrie, Ron Cook, Gary Kemp and other celebrities. They play a…
Why the BBC International Playwriting Competition really matters
We don’t know whether ‘Aziz H’ listened to radio plays as he grew up in Yemen. In fact we don’t…
Boy, does Nicole Kidman look terrible: Destroyer reviewed
Destroyer is an LA noir starring Nicole Kidman ‘as you have never seen her before’. Her hair is terrible. Her…
Was Pierre Bonnard any good?
An attendant at an art gallery in France once apprehended a little old vandal, or so the story goes. He…
The brutish brilliance of Rebecca Saunders
If you take awards seriously (which of course you shouldn’t) you could argue that Rebecca Saunders is now Britain’s most…
Danny Dyer’s Right Royal Family might well be the oddest TV show of recent times
Last year on Who Do You Think You Are?, Danny Dyer — EastEnders actor and very possibly Britain’s most cockney…
One nasty moment aside, the ENB’s Manon is superlative
If you like the BBC’s Les Misérables, you’ll love English National Ballet’s Manon. Manon, in Kenneth MacMillan’s telling, is The…
As so often, teenage girls called this one right: The 1975 reviewed
The teenage girls are often right. They were right about Sinatra and they were right about Elvis. They were right…
Portrait of Leonard French by Hal Missingham
Arguably the most monumental of Australian artists, Leonard French experienced extraordinary fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some…
Life
My hero Roger Federer
Asked how he was feeling as he was about to give a speech to a ladies group, Mark Twain, looking…
When a reader invited me to stay with him in Exmoor estate, how could I refuse?
My first night back in Blighty, I sat all evening at the kitchen table drinking wine with a charming, courteous…
Surrey’s Gore-tex-collar crime wave
The frustrating thing about rights is that when you give them to people they don’t cherish and appreciate them. They…
Game changer
Game Changer, the long-awaited book by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, has now appeared. This represents the most thorough inside…
no. 538
White to play. This is from Carlsen-Rapport, Wijk aan Zee 2019. The influence of AlphaZero is being felt at elite…
Happy talk
In Competition No. 3082 you were invited to write a poem taking as your first line ‘Happy the man, and…
2392: Beknighted
The unclued lights, two of two words and the remainder when paired, are of a kind. Across 1 No…
to 2389: All change
The paired unclued lights are anagrams of one another, most being symmetrically arranged; 2/21, 5/23, 12/41, 15/25, 19D/20. First prize Alan Peevers,…
The media were guilty of their own ‘fake news’ when it came to protesting schoolchildren
Donald Trump is often criticised by liberal news organisations like CNN and the New York Times for resorting to the…
When trans sportsmen and women compete, can it ever be a level playing field?
Amid the many splendours of West Side Story is this lyric: ‘My sister wears a moustache, my brother wears a…
Dear Mary: how do I stop a Londoner dominating my village book club?
Q.A senior colleague, on discovering that I’m a friend of someone who has become quite famous, engaged with me warmly…
If Tony Blair was still prime minister, I’d be less terrified of Holborn Dining Room
The 1930s aesthetic is not quite as fun as it used to be. You can enjoy the detritus of fascism…
There’s something grotesque about the jargon of Universal Credit
The government (if it hasn’t fallen yet) has found difficulty moving people onto Universal Credit from the benefits that they…
