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The Spectator

29 January 2022 Aus

Their phoney war

It suits both Boris and Putin to pretend that Russia may invade Ukraine

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Don’t go woke, go for broke

With Australia Day vanishing in the rear-view mirror and most of the nation learning to live with Covid, the stage…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Uncivil war

Australians are following Americans in a dangerous experiment

Features Australia

Chinese whispers

Beijing sees Labor as a more compliant partner

Features Australia

Farewell to wokedemia

Jordan Peterson cancels his subscription to campus correctness

Features Australia

Come back, Bill

Save us from a Seinfeld election

Features Australia

Switch off the fear porn

Most legacy media companies offer Covid propaganda not investigative journalism

Features Australia

Aloha carbon emissions

The Tongan island that blew up explodes the climate myth about sea levels

Features Australia

China’s Pacific projection

Australia can’t afford complacency

Features Australia

Darwin under attack

Numbers tell the story of Australia’s northern war

Features

Features

Korea’s anti-feminists

How men’s rights became a big political issue

Features

The abandoned revolution

Has the government lost interest in Brexit?

Features, New Zealand

Fortress New Zealand

Faith in ‘Saint Jacinda’ is starting to fade

Features

Classified information

The seduction of back-page ads

Features

Letter from Odessa

‘God Save the Queen’ trended on Ukrainian social media over the weekend. ‘As a Brit in Kiev I have never…

Features

Small matters

The difficulties of downsizing

Notes on...

Fur

We in Britain have long been much more squeamish about fur than other Europeans. I still well remember the snide…

Features

Their phoney war

It suits both Boris and Putin to pretend that Russia may invade Ukraine

The Week

Letters

Letters

Russia’s star Sir: Wolfgang Münchau is surely right to highlight the risk posed to European peace and stability by Germany’s…

Leading article

How Boris escapes

When Omicron struck, Britain was already the most boosted country in Europe. Our programme was so advanced that 80 per…

Barometer

Barometer

Prime numbers As of 29 January Boris Johnson will have been Prime Minister for two years and 190 days. Currently…

Diary

Diary

I only voted in one no-confidence motion. The leader was Iain Duncan Smith, and it was a bit awkward. I…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told the Commons that Britain was prepared to send troops to protect Nato allies…

Ancient and modern

Cher options

The singer Cher, now 75, has announced that, because she refuses to appear old, she is not going to allow…

Columnists

Any other business

Crypto crash explained: what goes up must come down

‘Market turmoil’ looks set as the theme of the week, so let’s take a close look at a trading arena…

Columns

Get out of my way, Lycra warriors

I know that all must have prizes in the Victimisation Olympics these days, but when I heard a bicycle-rider on…

Columns

The blame games are about to begin

‘The main job of a government is to ensure that the economics don’t go wrong.’ So argued an economist friend…

Columns

The freedom to be wrong

I must offer my support to Luke Main and Dr Joanna Brunker, who as a consequence of their fervent Christian…

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

Justin Webb is normally one of the least self-righteous BBC presenters, but he was out-Maitlising rivals on the Today programme…

Columns

Mutiny on the Bounty

‘I can’t put into words how awful this is’ remarks one Tory MP. The party is split not on the…

Books

Australian Books

French Kiss-Off

For decades the purpose of British settlement in New South Wales seemed too obvious to question. The American War of…

More from Books

Where life is evil now

The idea of ‘pre-crime’ was popularised by Philip K. Dick’s story ‘The Minority Report’ and the 2002 Steven Spielberg film…

More from Books

True grit

In her memoir Time on Rock, Anna Fleming charts her progress from ‘terrified novice’ to ‘competent leader’ as she scales…

More from Books

Smoking muskets and flashing daggers

The atmospheric medieval town of Rye on the south coast still celebrates being a former haunt of smugglers, and on…

More from Books

Gardening for pleasure and instruction

On 23 May 1804, two months before his daughter’s wedding, John Coakley Lettsom threw open his estate in Camberwell. Some…

More from Books

The trouble with Auntie

An incalculable number of trees have been hewn down recently in order to provide paper for people writing lengthy, largely…

More from Books

Change or decay

Climate change may be the central challenge of our century, but almost all attention has focused on its consequences for…

More from Books

The least Soviet-friendly artist imaginable

The KGB might not have known much about modern art, but they knew what they liked. For instance, at what…

Lead book review

The heart of the matter

Kathleen Stock describes how four women undergraduates in 1940s Oxford challenged an arid, modish philosophy

More from Books

We were warned

Her name has faded, but the British author and editor Kay Dick once cut a striking figure. She lived in…

More from Books

Shades of the prison house

For Jean-Paul Dubois, as for Emily Dickinson, ‘March is the month of expectation’. A prolific writer, he limits his literary…

Arts

Australian Arts

Don’t Look Up

How strange it is to be in a supposedly opened-up world, even as the Omicron variety of the virus shuts…

Arts feature

Call of the wild

Francis Bacon sensed our inner beastliness and painted it with astonishing power, says Martin Gayford

Radio

Disappearing doilies

This week marks the beginning of modernism season on BBC Radio 3 and 4, which means it’s time for some…

Theatre

Boom and bust

Moulin Rouge wins no marks for its storyline. A struggling Parisian theatre is bought out by an evil financier who…

Dance

All that pizazz

Velvet waistcoats, technicolour tulle and some very spangly harem pants — English National Ballet’s atelier must have been mighty busy…

Cinema

A work of art

Pedro Almodovar’s latest is a film about identity, secrets, lies, buried skeletons, real and metaphorical. But what you mainly need…

Exhibitions

Everywhere and nowhere

The second most interesting thing about this digital exhibition is that it is not for art critics like me. I…

Classical

There will be blood

Say what you like about that Duke of Mantua, but he’s basically an OK sort of bloke. A bit of…

Pop

A great leap forward

The single thing you don’t want when you are beginning a run of four shows in a prestige venue, with…

Television

Good cop, bad cop

Older readers may remember a time when people signalled their cultural superiority with the weird boast that they didn’t watch…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie Life

Even in Australian publications of a conspicuously conservative disposition, it has been some time since any respected pundit has suggested,…

Aussie Life

Aussie Language

Here’s a delightful expression I have just encountered: ‘offence archaeology’. This is the practice of going through the social media…

Crossword

2540: Recycling components

Eight unclued lights, arranged symmetrically, comprise two quartets, one of which makes the other go round.   Across 1 How…

Low life

Low life

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said to the big unit stationed behind her computer. She’s the chief, this one. She shows…

Real life

Real life

After launching an investigation into my missing phone, Vodafone informed me it could not deal with me any further until…

Bridge

Bridge

During lockdown I had a bit of a tidy-up and came across a Post-it note with the following statement written…

Mind your language

Helpmeet

‘What’s so funny?’ asked my husband, accusingly, as I made an amused noise while relaxing with a copy of the…

High life

High life

Gstaad Dinner parties are no longer verboten here, so I posed a question to some youngsters my son had over:…

Spectator sport

Going downhill fast

As we digest another Ashes thrashing for England’s cricketers in Australia, and wonder whether the 1966 World Cup victory will…

Chess puzzle

Puzzle no. 687

Black to play. Grandelius–Rapport, Tata Steel Chess 2022. With a bishop resting on a3, the White king can never sit…

Food

Lillie’s pad

The Cadogan hotel, Chelsea, is where Oscar Wilde was arrested for sodomy and gross indecency in 1895, in Room 118,…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: Your problems solved

Q. I treat myself to a manicure every ten days. It’s a 30-minute appointment and the girl I use is…

No sacred cows

Highway to hell

I did a speed awareness course on Monday. For the uninitiated, you have the option of doing one of these…

Crossword solution

Solution to 2537: My Lord!

The exchange that gave rise to the expression CURATE’s (19 Down) Egg was ‘I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg,…

Competition

Mr and misses

In Competition No. 3233, you were invited to invent a new character for the Mr Men/Little Miss series by Roger…

Chess

Pixel this

When Magnus Carlsen won last year’s Meltwater Champions Tour, they made two trophies. One was for Carlsen, and the second…