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The Spectator

27 November 2021 Aus

The Covid revolts

Europe’s new wave of unrest

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Conservative populists

‘Disgusting right-wing nut-jobs’, ‘rebels’, ‘populist conservatives’ and of course ‘anti-vaxxers’. These are just some of the politer insults being hurled…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Testing Perrottet

The NSW Premier must not betray those who have supported him the most

Features Australia

Business/Robbery, etc.

India rescues Australia’s fossil fuels

Features Australia

Covid roulette

It’s OK to confuse Austria and Australia

Features Australia

Global freezing?

Climate politics as high farce

Features Australia

Global warming’s great leap backwards

What if man-made warming was a hoax all along?

Features Australia

Aux bien pensants

Global warming to Rittenhouse – media relaying propaganda In his lament that he is but a ‘climate confusionist’, former university…

Features

Features

The fight to refuse

Why are Europe’s fascists so opposed to compulsory vaccination?

Features

Sell-by date

Christmas adverts have become unbearable

Features

Loose canon

What makes for a classic book?

Features

Meeting Mr Z

Éric Zemmour on Brexit, immigration and ‘le wokeisme’

Features, World

Daughters for sale

Afghans are growing desperate

Features

The Covid revolts

Europe’s new wave of unrest

Features

The other women

Mistresses remain a potent status symbol in China

Notes on...

Christmas elves

I was 19 when I became a Hamleys elf. The closest thing I can compare it to is military service.…

The Week

Diary

Diary

  Amsterdam These are dangerous times in the Netherlands. Anti-lockdown mobs have torched cars, thrown rocks and attacked the police.…

Leading article

The cost of Boris

Earlier this week, the Conservative party sent an appeal to its registered supporters asking them to become members. ‘We’re delivering…

Ancient and modern

Game theory

The ‘globally outstanding’ University of Durham has plans to help its undergraduates who pay their way by prostituting themselves. Three…

Barometer

Barometer

Red Peppa? In a rambling speech to the CBI, Boris Johnson praised Peppa Pig. Has she changed political sides? Peppa…

Letters

Letters

Peace project Sir: It was heartening to read your editorial on the peace which has reigned in Europe since 1945,…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, praised Peppa Pig in a speech to the Confederation of British Industry: ‘Who would’ve…

Columnists

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

I like to think that Boris Johnson’s rambling performance at the CBI this week was a satire against the organisation…

Columns

Keeping up appearances

A Church of England primary school in Richmond, London, has junked Sir Winston Churchill and J.K. Rowling as names for…

Columns

Will we ever go out again?

If there’s one thing I misjudged completely, it’s how creepy and long-lasting the effects of lockdown on all of us…

Any other business

Black Friday warning: beware of buying now and paying later

Are you logged on to Klarna, Clearpay, Laybuy or Zilch for your Black Friday shopping binge — or are you…

Columns

America’s identity crisis

There was no reason for the world ever to hear the name Kyle Rittenhouse. Except that in the summer of…

Columns

The Tories at sea

Ever since Boris Johnson’s disastrous decision to try to stay the standards committee’s guilty verdict against Owen Paterson, things have…

Books

Australian Books

Unexplained connection

Why would an Australian lawyer and historian write a book explaining how the English and American Revolutions produced the American…

More from Books

Doctors at sea

Medicine was founded by Hippocrates in the 5th century BC. Doctors continued to study the Hippocratic texts into the 19th…

More from Books

Lockdown creations

‘I may, one day, stop making notes and writing down recipes,’ Nigel Slater says in A Cook’s Book (Fourth Estate,…

More from Books

‘A triumph of meandering’

This is a book about George Orwell’s recognition that desire and joy can be forces of opposition to the authoritarian…

More from Books

Good old bad old days

After a career spanning 50 years, 40 books and about a million parties, Anthony Holden has written a memoir. Based…

Lead book review

The bourgeois surrealist

René Magritte’s life, so outwardly respectable, was as full of surprises as his art, says Philip Hensher

More from Books

Time and motion study

Since the publication of his debut, Remainder, Tom McCarthy has established himself as the Christopher Nolan of literary fiction: his…

More from Books

A cruel affliction

Obsessed with purity and pain, the boundaries of blame and innocence, Skin is a fascinating meditation on psoriasis, the long-lasting…

More from Books

The best of the Stuarts

Many girls dream about their favourite princesses. Elizabeth Stuart, a princess herself, took this fantasy a step further and modelled…

Arts

Australian Arts

As You Like It

As You Like It is middle Shakespeare, probably lateish 1590s. It’s not one of the earlier happy comedies like the…

Pop

The weird turned pro

Pop quiz time: which act was named Melody MakerGroup of the Year in 1975? The answer is not, as you…

The Listener

Adele: 30

Grade: C The problem I have is that I thought she was pretty awful before — when she was just…

Television

Formula milquetoast

If it weren’t for this job I sometimes wonder whether I’d even bother watching TV at all. This mood strikes…

Cinema

Too much cod and not enough camp

Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci has been much anticipated. The cast is stellar. It’s based on a luscious, true story…

Classical

Sublime – and ridiculous

It’s the final scene of The Valkyrie and Wotan is wearing cords. They’re a sensible choice for a hard-working deity:…

Radio

Our old Macca

The Paul people are out in force these days. A New Yorker profile, a book and a new documentary have…

Theatre

Guilt-free hilarity

World-class sex bomb Janie Dee stars in a fabulously silly revival of the American comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha…

Exhibitions

Wild at heart

On 13 July 1815, John Constable wrote to his fiancée, Maria Bicknell, about this and that. Interspersed with a discussion…

Arts feature

The Guinea Pig club

Lloyd Evans on a musical that tells the story of the pioneering maverick whose methods for treating disfigured second world war airmen revolutionised plastic surgery

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie Life

Koalas & babies When Covid first hit the news nearly two years ago the Save the Children Fund ran an…

Aussie Life

Aussie Language

The hot political word of the moment has to be faction. In Victoria the anti-corruption body, IBAC, is currently investigating…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary

Q. I belong to a fairly intimate private club which is the one reliable oasis of calm and civility that…

No sacred cows

Think about the children

When Caroline and I got married in 2001, having four kids was not only fashionable, it was the socially responsible…

Food

Spanish gold

Piccadilly is losing its patina of dirt, its cadaverous character. It is overpriced and over-renovated,a meeting place for luxury goods.…

High life

High life

Gstaad I have two special girlfriends, Lynne and Fiona, the ladies who guard The Spectator’s entrance against the outraged #MeToo…

Bridge

Bridge

Succumbing to your emotions at the bridge table can be fatal. Whatever you’re feeling, get a grip! Easier said than…

The turf

The turf

Ascot’s image is all champagne and fascinators, high society and high rollers. Said Art Buchwald: ‘Ascot is so exclusive that…

Crossword

2534: Off-pitch

Eight unclued lights (four of two words) are of a kind.   Across 1 False prophet faces interjection, perhaps (12,…

Spectator sport

Poor Ole wasn’t cut out for Man U

Manchester United have ended up with a temporary coach before they look for an interim manager. Haven’t we heard that…

Real life

Real life

Surprise, surprise. The person who had the shield taken out of the street light so it shone back into my…

Mind your language

Ramp down

Language change outdoes nonsense, just as misbehaviour outdoes satire. In Through the Looking-Glass Alice mentions to the Gnat that, where…

Low life

Low life

After checking me in, the receptionist, who was wearing an overcoat, said: ‘There is no heating in the hotel. The…

Chess

The world championship

‘Time to say Dubai,’ tweeted Magnus Carlsen, like some wry Bond villain, when he learned that the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi…

Chess puzzle

Puzzle No. 681

White to play. Erigaisi–Liem, Tata Steel Rapid, 2021. Here 1 Rxf6? Qd1+ sees White getting mated on the back rank.…

Competition

Show time

In Competition No. 3226, you were invited to rewrite, in pompous and prolix style, any well-known simple poem. The seed…

Crossword solution

Solution To 2531: Villainy

The unclued lights are VILLAINS encountered by James Bond. First prize Ian Skillen, Cambuslang, Glasgow Runners-up Liz Knights, Walton Highway,…