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The Spectator

29 February 2020 Aus

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Australia

Leading article Australia

To Boris, from down under

Dear Boris, How ironic that at the very moment you succeed in unshackling your great country from the tyranny and…

Australian Columnists

Brown Study

Brown study

As is obvious from recent events, we live in times where it is not enough to disagree with someone and…

Simon Collins

Simon Collins

Apparently many travellers now pay more attention to a hotel’s guest reviews than to its advertising. I tend to ignore…

Diary Australia

Des Moines diary

As is obvious from recent events, we live in times where it is not enough to disagree with someone and…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Net-zero credibility

Who will save our kids from a socialist world of despair?

Features Australia

Allow us to check your thinking

On Harry Miller’s important win against Britain’s thought police

Features Australia

China fails the virus test

Chinese leaders should apologise for the coronavirus

Features Australia

60 minutes of shlock

...as Turnbull fans the flames of outrage

Features Australia

Harvey wallbanger

How far did the predatory behaviour go?

Features

Features

Le crunch

Two irreconcilable versions of Brexit are about to collide

Features

Pet peeve

Let animals be animals

Features

A dirty business

Criminal gangs are growing rich on public-sector contracts

Features

Condé nasty

How Blair’s protégé became another African strongman

Features

A new angle

What would a Keir Starmer Labour party look like?

Features

Feverish imaginations

The most dangerous thing about coronavirus is the hysteria

Notes on...

Rockall

In 1978, an invitation was sent to some 200 members of Oxford’s Dangerous Sports Club, which simply read: ‘Tea, Rockall,…

The Week

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the Week

Home The government told Britons returning from 11 quarantined towns in northern Italy to isolate themselves, for fear of spreading…

Diary

Diary

I made the mistake of saying I thought insects might help feed the world. They are high-protein, cheap to farm…

Barometer

Barometer

What a hole The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens. A few of the…

Ancient and modern

Brevity goes a long way

The PM is insisting that the briefings he finds in his red box every evening should be, well, brief, and…

Letters

Letters

Devolved or decentralised? Sir: Paul Collier (‘Northern lights’, 22 February) conflates what devolution has come to mean, in UK terms, with…

Leading article

Trial and error

A cornerstone of any -functioning democracy is the separation of police and the courts on one hand, and government and…

Columnists

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

The fall from grace of Jean Vanier is truly a sad story. The founder of the L’Arche communities did extraordinary…

World Politics

Sanders, Trump, and the populist juju

‘Bernie beats Trump! Bernie beats Trump!’ That’s what Bernie Sanders’s fans keep chanting, and they have the polls to prove…

Rod Liddle

The war the government must win

We will rue the day we all decided bullying was a bad thing. The consequence is that the inept, the…

Douglas Murray

How Sinn Fein got away with murder

The online world should be credited when it gets something right. And on Twitter an account titled ‘On This Day…

Mary Wakefield

Why did no one believe Johnny Depp?

When it was first reported that Johnny Depp had been hit and pelted with crockery by his slight, blonde then…

Any other business

Bet like Buffett: the virus scareis a chance to buy cheaper

If anything, stock markets have been slow to respond to the spreading coronavirus outbreak. Stories of Chinese supply interruptions, from…

Books

Lead book review

The cheapest, deadliest weapon

Nothing prepared Antony Beevor for this devastating exposé
of the systematic use of rape in war and ethnic cleansing

Books

Going round in circles

Some years ago I participated in a late-night Radio 3 show on exploration and travel. When I left the studio…

Books

Can we have a pet instead?

When you’re not a mother it’s hard to imagine what motherhood is like. Anyone you know who becomes one assures…

Books

Completely unhinged

Faced with Marina Lewycka’s new novel, it’s tempting to say that The Good, the Bad and the Little Bit Stupid…

Books

Period piece

There’s something — isn’t there? — of the literary also-ran about Graham Swift. He was on Granta’s first, influential Best…

Books

An Ethiopian Exodus

Menachem Begin was Israel’s most reviled and misunderstood prime minister. Reviled by Britain for his paramilitary activities against the British…

Books

The prize of the skies

The art of falconry is more than 3,000 years old and possibly as popular now as at any time. Its…

Books

The great taboo-breaker

In 1983 I was sent to New York to interview Johnny Rotten and I took the opportunity to call on…

Books

Not a party person

This book is a rather startling depiction of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s involvement with the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), his sponsored…

Arts

Arts feature

‘Opera is something you come to later’

After a record 18 years – and counting – as music director, Antonio Pappano talks to Norman Lebrecht about life after Covent Garden and how opera is beyond younger audiences

The Listener

Grimes: Miss Anthropocene

Grade: B The old axiom no longer applies. In modern popular music, it is possible not only to gild a…

Opera

Eurotrash Verdi

Verdi’s Luisa Miller is set in the Tyrol in the early 17th century, and for some opera directors that’s a…

Television

Seeking closure

As in many thrillers, the characters on display in Flesh and Blood (ITV, Monday to Thursday) often seemed locked in…

Theatre

Changing the bard

A Moorish princess shipwrecked on the English coast disguises herself as a boy to protect her virtue. Arriving in London,…

Dance

This will hurt

Pina Bausch’s best work always hovered between the familiar and the unknown. The late choreographer revelled in borders and thresholds,…

Exhibitions

It’s grim up north

The strange and faintly sinister works of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert have been compared — not unreasonably — to…

Cinema

What a scorcher

Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is set on a remote, windswept Brittany island in the late 18th…

Culture Buff

Trent Dalton

He’s barely in his forties. He’s married with two nearly teenage daughters. He lives in Brisbane. He’s a staff journalist…

Life

High life

High Life

Gstaad It feels like a sepia-tinged melodrama, one directed by the great schlock master Sam Wood. Driving along the winding…

Low life

Low life

Joyce Marriott of Pyrton, Oxford, has written a letter to the Times on the subject of how a person’s imagination…

Real life

Real life

Nice of the NHS to send an advisory text about coronavirus, because I was wondering. Is it possible to have…

Bridge

Bridge

Bridge experts are a lovely lot. They give their time freely and generously to encourage and teach students and bring…

Chess

Increment and excrement

The science-fiction writer Douglas Adams ridiculed our primitive species for considering digital watches to be ‘a pretty neat idea’. Digital…

Chess puzzle

no. 593

White to play, a variation from McShane–-Kamsky. In the game above, I was hoping to see 31…Qa5, as I had…

Competition

By George

In Competition No. 3137, to mark the 70th anniversary of George Orwell’s death, you were invited to submit a short…

Crossword

2446: Spring time

Each clue defines the full solution to which the letter-count refers. However, the cryptic wordplay leads to the grid entry,…

Crossword solution

to 2443: Middle of the road

Each unclued light is a genus name of a TREE (i.e. ‘middle of the road’ = (s)TREE(t)). Cornus was also allowed…

No sacred cows

How far should we go to defend free speech?

This week sees the official launch of the Free Speech Union — an organisation that stands up for the speech…

Spectator sport

Tyson Fury, the colossusweight star

Thankfully, Tyson Fury is as good at boxing as he is terrible at singing. But he really should pick on…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary

Q. I adore doing jigsaws and these days there’s an added bonus — by posting my progress on Instagram I…

Food

What waste!

Ugly Butterfly is a zero-waste restaurant and champagne bar on the King’s Road, Chelsea. The ‘champagne bar’ addition is so…

Mind your language

Elbow

Before the Covid-19 scare I never thought that one particular Spanish proverb would come in useful. It goes: ‘Los ojos…