The Spectator
28 April 2018 Aus
Why Britain is lucky to have Meghan Markle
Australia
Act on rogue bankers, PM
Malcolm Turnbull’s contortions over the banking royal commission highlight the Prime Minister being so right yet so wrong. His government…
Australian Columnists
Australian notes
Bank robbery I am a reformed, recidivist bank robber. I did it the old-fashioned way; by storming into a bank…
Simon Collins
I wonder if Malcolm Turnbull has found time yet to see Armando Innuccio’s new film The Death of Stalin? I…
Brown study
I know that Dr Tim Soutphommasane, our Race Commissioner, has been maligned in certain quarters, but I want to thank…
Kiwi diary
New Zealand has lived up to its reputation as the Land Of The Long White Cloud. Correction. It surpasses that…
Australian Features
Australia, a failing state
According to the UN’s definition, ‘failed states’ are political entities that demonstrate little or no ability to provide their citizens…
Menzies, the banks and Liddell
The appalling behaviour of the banks and insurance companies, exposed in testimony to the banking Royal Commission, is nothing new.…
Whatever happened to conservation?
When I was a pre-schooler my mother enrolled me in the WA Junior Naturalists’ Club. We met in a basement…
Cut!
The Australian screen industry’s recent ‘Make it Australian’ campaign – complete with petition signed by local heavyweights like Cate Blanchett…
Zhe who must be obeyed
In the memorable words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (no, students, you’ll have to Google him, old white guy with a…
Features
Why Britain is lucky to have Meghan Markle
The wedding of Prince Harry, sixth in line to the British throne, and Meghan Markle, actress and former star of…
Hooray for Meghan Markle, a very modern adventuress
I’m keen on all sorts of my fellow females — broads, gold-diggers, career girls — but the best is the…
Interview: Meet Mariana Mazzucato, big-state capitalism’s new champion
‘It was Plato who said storytellers rule the world,’ observes Mariana Mazzucato, her powerful voice tempered with a beaming smile,…
Windrush is just the start: records are being shredded and history deleted
Have you ever thrown something away and then realised that you needed it? Surely all of us have done so.…
The strange death of English cricket
In 2005 I published a book called The Strange Death of Tory England, and a long article called ‘Cricket’s final…
My life in Paris as a Diplomatic Wag
The French President says he wants to rule as a Jupiter — but he doesn’t look like a Jupiter to…
The Scouts can’t offer equal access to the disabled – they won’t survive
A couple of years ago, Simon Barnes wrote a moving piece in this magazine about how his son Eddie, who…
In praise of Chelsea Green, a London oasis
Splats of calves’ liver in a puddle of blood; rabbits, headless, stretched and stripped of fur; and plucked poussins, nestling…
The Week
Kim Jong-un could play Trump like a $10 fiddle. Here’s how
Last year, Donald Trump called Kim Jong-un a ‘little rocket man’ and tweeted a photo boasting that his own nuclear…
Enoch Powell wasn’t racist – he just craved attention
Dining in splendour beneath Van Dycks as we forked in the delicious venison, it was hard not to agree with…
Portrait of the week: a new royal baby, more Brexit rows and the Trump-Macron bromance
Home No. 10 insisted: ‘We will not be staying in the customs union or joining a customs union.’ The undertaking…
Worried about owning your own home? You should be
Kill or cure An anti-war protester on a march against the Syrian missile attacks claimed that President Assad couldn’t be…
The staple of our strength
From ‘News of the week’, 27 April 1918: The Navy has come altogether into its own again. The details of…
Letters: When did nationalists lose their sense of humour?
Resetting Brexit Sir: I agree with Fraser Nelson’s article ‘Brexit blunders’ (21 April). I am a Leaver, but immigration did…
Columnists
Why is the National Trust trying to downplay its established purpose?
Hilary McGrady, the new director-general of the National Trust, sent me (and no doubt other journalists) a nice email hoping…
Theresa May should fear a Brexiteer who feels betrayed
It is sometimes tempting to imagine that the Brexit negotiations will follow the course of a Sunday night TV drama:…
The origins of Labour’s racism
Another word which has gained a new meaning in the present decade, along with ‘vulnerable’ and ‘diverse’: survivor. Once it…
They say Enoch Powell had a fine mind. I’m not so sure
Enoch Powell has been in many minds this month. It’s the 50th anniversary of his famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech…
The Home Office nearly deported my husband
What I remember about preparing to leave for my husband’s appointment with the Home Office in Croydon in 2007 is…
Bank AGMs are an opportunity to shout about branch closures
The season of high-street banks’ annual general meetings is with us and I urge you to turn up and make…
Books
The most bizarre museum heist ever
They don’t look like a natural pair. First there’s the author, Kirk Wallace Johnson, a hero of America’s war in…
Kitty Marion: too radical even for the suffragettes
The suffragettes are largely remembered not as firestarters and bombers but as pale martyrs to patriarchy. The hunger artists refusing…
A disturbing psychological experiment involving secrecy, small boys and sharp knives
Gina Perry is the eminent psychologist who blew apart Stanley Milgram’s shocking revelations from his 1961 research. Milgram had caused…
Britain was utterly wretched in 1975. No wonder Europe seemed a better bet
‘I voted to stay in a common market. No one ever mentioned a political union.’ It is the complaint of…
The tragedy of Syria: how protest spiralled into savagery
The fateful day five years ago began like any other for the family. A pot of black tea with cardamon…
Will ‘I’m a Tudorbethan, Get Me Out of Here’ be hitting our screens soon?
Are books becoming an adjunct to TV? Both of these are good reads, but both feel influenced by — and…
An intense conversation about life, love and writing with Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy draws her epigraph for The Cost of Living from Marguerite Duras’s Practicalities: ‘You’re always more unreal to yourself…
The daring exploits of Romain Gary
When Romain Gary, a courageous and much decorated pilot in the RAF’s Free French squadron, was presented to the Queen…
From Stalin’s poetry to Saddam’s romances: the terrible prose of tyrants
‘Reading makes the world better. It is how humans merge. How minds connect… Reading is love in action.’ Those are…
A single mother hits rock bottom in Tokyo: Territory of Light reviewed
Before her death two years ago, Yuko Tsushima was a powerful voice in Japanese literature; a strong candidate for the…
How I singlehandedly kept the Will Self industry going
In 1994, Matthew De Abaitua, an aspiring writer and student on East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA, applies for a job…
Arts
How Rodin made a Parthenon above Paris
‘My Acropolis,’ Auguste Rodin called his house at Meudon. Here, the sculptor made a Parthenon above Paris. Surrounded by statues…
Kylie’s latest album is truly appalling: Golden reviewed
Grade: D– Kylie has a place in my heart for having made the second-best single to feature the chorus ‘na…
All the world’s a stage
How to stage Shakespeare on air and bring the text to life without the benefit of set, costumes, choreography and…
Bravura, assurance and generosity: Mark Simpson’s new Cello Concerto reviewed
The opening of Mark Simpson’s new Cello Concerto is pure Hollywood. A fanfare in the low brass, an upwards rush…
An unmitigated triumph: Salome at Opera North reviewed
Salome is my favourite opera by Richard Strauss, the only one where there is no danger, at any point, of…
The artist more fond of flowers and vegetables than people – and who can blame him
I have occasionally mused that there is plenty of scope for a Tate East Anglia — a pendant on the…
What’s the point of Philomena Cunk?
Because I’m a miserable old reactionary determined to see a sinister Guardianista plot in every BBC programme I watch, I…
Flop of the year? Royal Court’s Instructions for Correct Assembly reviewed
‘Hunt the Flop’, the Royal Court’s bizarre quest for dud plays, has found a candidate for this year’s overall prize.…
Not like any serial-killer thriller you’ve seen before: Beast reviewed
When I first read that Beast is a serial-killer thriller my heart sank like a stone — yet more women…
The Firebird – choreography by Liam Scarlett
Not every young Artistic Director writes a best-selling memoir that is made into a successful feature film. Mao’s Last Dancer…
Life
Fascism isn’t rising, but bien-pensant hysteria certainly is
Benito lives! The Blackshirts are here. Fascism is on the march — at least according to Madeleine Albright, secretary of…
Knife skills for eight-year-olds
Pig’s trotters. Lamb’s feet stuffed with their brains. Flayed wild rabbits, all sinew, muscle and eyeballs. Nude chickens with flopping…
Save me from middle managers dressed up as Spiderman
‘You’ve got your essay on your back, then?’ said the stable yard owner as I headed out with Darcy on…
The Grand National proved the naysayers wrong – again
When the photo finish confirmed that Tiger Roll and Davy Russell had held on to win the Grand National by…
Viennese Waltz
The Vienna variation of the Queen’s Gambit is notable for a line in which the pieces conduct an elaborate dance…
no. 503
Black to play. This position is from Bluebaum-Vitiugov, Grenke 2018. Can you spot Black’s amazing winning move? Answers to me…
Mind your language
In Competition No. 3045 you were invited to provide a poem about euphemisms. You avoided politics and sex (mostly),…
2356: Beetle
The unclued lights (one individually and five pairs) are of a kind. Across 1 German leader put stuff back…
to 2353: Too many
The unclued lights are (too many) TV COOKS, individually at 18, 21 and 28, and paired at 25/13, 27/1A, 30D/10…
Uganda is saving its gorillas – but there’s a human cost
I’m currently in Africa, about to go gorilla trekking in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a large primeval forest located in…
Could an Owl make video conferencing take off?
When I was ten, the two things we all expected to enjoy by 2020 were flying cars and videotelephony. What…
Dear Mary: My new boyfriend is too short. Can I make him wear shoe lifts?
Q. An acquaintance, whom I admire but don’t know well, sent me a ‘begging’ letter to donate to a charity…
Put your trust in Hungarian wine (yes, really)
The wines of Tokaji run like a golden thread through Hungarian history. There are references to their nectar-like quality in…
When is an aubergine not an ‘aubergine’?
In the warm weather, I had an al fresco hit with my mad-apple bruschette. Mad-apple shows the tangle to which…
