The Spectator
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
Testing Perrottet
The NSW Premier must not betray those who have supported him the most
Feel-gooders take a knee, do-gooders take action
Making a statement versus making a difference
Dan slams the door shut on freedom’s narrow corridor
Why liberty has to be fought for
Global warming’s great leap backwards
What if man-made warming was a hoax all along?
Aux bien pensants
Global warming to Rittenhouse – media relaying propaganda In his lament that he is but a ‘climate confusionist’, former university…
Features
Christmas elves
I was 19 when I became a Hamleys elf. The closest thing I can compare it to is military service.…
The Week
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…
Game theory
The ‘globally outstanding’ University of Durham has plans to help its undergraduates who pay their way by prostituting themselves. Three…
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
I like to think that Boris Johnson’s rambling performance at the CBI this week was a satire against the organisation…
Keeping up appearances
A Church of England primary school in Richmond, London, has junked Sir Winston Churchill and J.K. Rowling as names for…
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…
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…
America’s identity crisis
There was no reason for the world ever to hear the name Kyle Rittenhouse. Except that in the summer of…
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
Unexplained connection
Why would an Australian lawyer and historian write a book explaining how the English and American Revolutions produced the American…
Doctors at sea
Medicine was founded by Hippocrates in the 5th century BC. Doctors continued to study the Hippocratic texts into the 19th…
Lockdown creations
‘I may, one day, stop making notes and writing down recipes,’ Nigel Slater says in A Cook’s Book (Fourth Estate,…
‘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…
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…
The bourgeois surrealist
René Magritte’s life, so outwardly respectable, was as full of surprises as his art, says Philip Hensher
Time and motion study
Since the publication of his debut, Remainder, Tom McCarthy has established himself as the Christopher Nolan of literary fiction: his…
A cruel affliction
Obsessed with purity and pain, the boundaries of blame and innocence, Skin is a fascinating meditation on psoriasis, the long-lasting…
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
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…
The weird turned pro
Pop quiz time: which act was named Melody MakerGroup of the Year in 1975? The answer is not, as you…
Adele: 30
Grade: C The problem I have is that I thought she was pretty awful before — when she was just…
Formula milquetoast
If it weren’t for this job I sometimes wonder whether I’d even bother watching TV at all. This mood strikes…
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…
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:…
Our old Macca
The Paul people are out in force these days. A New Yorker profile, a book and a new documentary have…
Guilt-free hilarity
World-class sex bomb Janie Dee stars in a fabulously silly revival of the American comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha…
Wild at heart
On 13 July 1815, John Constable wrote to his fiancée, Maria Bicknell, about this and that. Interspersed with a discussion…
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
Koalas & babies When Covid first hit the news nearly two years ago the Save the Children Fund ran an…
Aussie Language
The hot political word of the moment has to be faction. In Victoria the anti-corruption body, IBAC, is currently investigating…
Think about the children
When Caroline and I got married in 2001, having four kids was not only fashionable, it was the socially responsible…
Spanish gold
Piccadilly is losing its patina of dirt, its cadaverous character. It is overpriced and over-renovated,a meeting place for luxury goods.…
2534: Off-pitch
Eight unclued lights (four of two words) are of a kind. Across 1 False prophet faces interjection, perhaps (12,…
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…
Ramp down
Language change outdoes nonsense, just as misbehaviour outdoes satire. In Through the Looking-Glass Alice mentions to the Gnat that, where…
The world championship
‘Time to say Dubai,’ tweeted Magnus Carlsen, like some wry Bond villain, when he learned that the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi…
Puzzle No. 681
White to play. Erigaisi–Liem, Tata Steel Rapid, 2021. Here 1 Rxf6? Qd1+ sees White getting mated on the back rank.…
Show time
In Competition No. 3226, you were invited to rewrite, in pompous and prolix style, any well-known simple poem. The seed…
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,…










































































