The Spectator
29 June 2019 Aus
Trump vs Xi: the new Cold War is hotting up
Australia
From Folau to 18C
‘Folau has criticised not only those who are homosexual, but drunkards, thieves, atheists, fornicators, adulterers and so on. So he’s…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
As we speak, a bright new class of newly-elected MPs and Senators is assembling in the cities, towns and remote…
Simon Collins
You keep yourself nice, you shake the right hands. You spend decades cultivating the good opinion of punters of every…
Australian Features
Go fund yourself!
In 2009, on ABC’s Q&A, host Tony Jones asked host of Channel Ten’s The Project and practising Muslim Waleed Aly…
Clairvoyant on fuel security?
What is it about the words ‘fuel security’ that this government doesn’t understand? The first duty of any government is…
Lawyers and law schools
Among a certain, shall we say more mature, segment of the population there is a lingering sense that lawyers as…
Legislating free speech
What is happening to Israel Folau should not happen in a free society. GoFundMe’s hypocritical decision to shut down a…
The Thuringian flagellants and the green gluers
Those young men and women who have taken to gluing themselves to walls and roads in order to save the…
Demography is destiny
When Sky News asked Australian Labor MP Anne Aly why she opposed the Coalition’s tax cut plan, she cited ‘the…
All aboard the anti-Catholic bandwagon
Driven by spite and ideology masquerading as a concern for ‘justice’, the anti-Catholic bandwagon rumbles on, unimpeded by the fall-off…
Features
Trump vs Xi: the new Cold War is hotting up
It will be all smiles when Donald Trump meets President Xi Jinping this week in Osaka at the annual meeting…
Max Hastings vs Boris Johnson: I know who I’d trust more
Sir Max Hastings, whom I engaged as editor of the Daily Telegraph in 1986 and who stayed in that role…
I once fell for Boris’s charm – I won’t make the same mistake again
Someone should write a guide to the best literary festivals. Sydney and Auckland would certainly be there, along with Sri…
Revealed: Boko Haram’s child army
In the rush to declare Isis dead now that its caliphate has been routed from Iraq and Syria, it’s easy…
Forget Boris. What about Jeremy Corbyn’s womanising?
He has been married several times, has a way with the ladies and always seems to land on his feet…
The end is nigh: the rise of middle-class apocalypticism
There’s a lot of anger about — and it’s not pleasant. But at least it means people are engaged as…
Is your doctor faking it?
Last October, Phil Coleman, a journalist on the Carlisle-based News & Star, went to cover the trial of Zholia Alemi,…
Why croquet beats cricket
People say cricket is the quintessential English game. Those people are wrong. Cricket may have a longer pedigree, but it’s…
The Week
Britain will soon have to pick a side in the US-Iran spat
Crises in the Gulf and Conservative leadership elections come around with unnerving regularity. It is not unknown for both to…
Portrait of the week: Boris’s barney, a stink at Southern Water and a pricy royal renovation
Home A neighbour of Boris Johnson, 55 (a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative party and hence for the…
Will Boris Johnson break up the Union?
I spent the early part of last week in London, filming what are known in the television trade as PTCs…
How many 999 calls are genuine emergencies?
To debate or not to debate Is Boris Johnson wise to shun TV debates? — Prior to the 2015 Labour…
Rory’s classic mistakes
If Rory Stewart had taken full advantage of his education at Eton and read classics at Oxford rather than PPE,…
Letters: God does lead us into temptation
Appeasement? Sir: Your editorial (‘Plan B’, 22 June) refers to the need for Boris Johnson, as prospective PM, to have…
Columnists
The biggest challenge for Boris isn’t this contest – it’s what comes next
Every campaign has a wobble — and Boris Johnson is getting his in early. A mix of complacency (he felt confident…
Why I’m not convinced by Boris
I had never heard of Mark Field until he was suspended for removing, in a commendably vigorous manner, the Greenpeace…
Abandoning stop and search would be abandoning a generation of kids
It was somehow inevitable that shortly after Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick announced a fall in violent crime, there would…
Smart motorways are very stupid
‘An attempted improvement which actually makes things worse.’ The Germans have a name for this — Verschlimmbesserung — and I…
Facebook’s new currency is not to be trusted
Friends of former Barclays chief executive John Varley — I don’t mean ‘people who speak to the media on his…
Books
Solving the mystery of my mother’s kidnap
At first glance, Laura Cumming’s memoir On Chapel Sands begins with what appears to be a happy ending. On an…
Creatures of the night: why do we find them irresistible?
When it was recently announced that Robert Pattinson, who played the vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight films, had secured…
Desperate souls: Travellers, by Helon Habila, reviewed
Death by water haunts the stories of Africans in Europe that flow through this fourth novel by Helon Habila. From…
A drag army in waiting: This Brutal House, by Niven Govinden, reviewed
Niven Govinden’s This Brutal House is set in the demi-monde of the New York vogue ball. This is an organised,…
For a passionate ecologist, Barry Lopez burns a lot of oil
It is more than a generation since the appearance of Barry Lopez’s classic Arctic Dreams. That book’s effortless integration of…
From bibliomania to kleptomania: the serious crimes of book lovers
In the spring of 1998, Rolling Stones fans in Germany were disappointed to hear that the band had been forced…
The Kan-do spirit: Under Red Skies, by Karoline Kan, reviewed
The defining feature of Chinese millennials is not Instagram, avocado on toast or propertylessness. Born in the early years of…
Fluttering to extinction: the tragedy of Britain’s butterflies
In 1979, despite the best efforts of scientists for more than a century, a butterfly called the British Large Blue…
Getting to grips with rocket science
Now that we are stupidly rendering Earth almost entirely uninhabitable by many species including our own (through overcrowding, failing political…
The free-spirited sisters who galvanised the Bloomsbury Group
It was high time we had a proper look at the four beautiful, original Olivier sisters. Hitherto, with one exception,…
History is made from ideas — but are ideas becoming history?
Wallace Stevens called it ‘the necessary angel’. Ted Hughes thought it ‘the most essential bit of machinery we have if…
Arts
Cindy Sherman – selfie queen
The selfie is, of course, a major, and to me mysterious, phenomenon of our age. The sheer indefatigability of selfie-takers,…
Funny moments swamped by an intolerable romance: Yesterday reviewed
Yesterday is the latest comedy (with sad bits) from Richard Curtis, directed by Danny Boyle, about an unsuccessful singer-songwriter, Jack,…
Why I’m done with Fleetwood Mac
There is something inexplicably exciting about pop’s notion of a ‘scene’: young musicians of similar outlooks drawn together by a…
Saved by the chorus
We’ve cried wolf with Handel. Ever since the modern trend began for staging the composer’s oratorios we’ve hailed each one…
A captivating freak-show: Bitter Wheat reviewed
Bitter Wheat, David Mamet’s latest play, features a loathsome Hollywood hotshot, Barney Fein, who offers to turn an actress into…
Shameless and corny: ITV’s Beecham House reviewed
ITV’s new drama Beecham House is set in late 18th-century India where the British and French were still battling it…
David Coverdale, lead singer of Whitesnake, talks hair, love handles and ‘sexism’
‘Invest in your hair,’ advises David Coverdale, a man with a shag of the stuff glossier than a supermodel’s and…
What drives Emily Maitlis?
It can’t be easy to find yourself on the other end of the microphone when you’re a journalist of the…
Brett Whiteley (1939-1992) Self portrait in the studio 1976
Painters and opera go together. Connected by passion and big gestures, it is not surprising that composers are drawn to…
Life
Nice men make terrible leaders
The Duke of Marlborough gave a toast last week that brought the house down during a Turning Point dinner for…
My oncologist is a shining goddess
The weather forecast was rain, torrential, all day, so I took my anorak. In the hospital car park it was…
You can tell a Remainer by their garden fence
Remainers don’t like borders, I get that. But I had always assumed this was a preference confined to geopolitics. I…
How an orphaned baby kudu gave solace to my grieving friend
Laikipia, Kenya On 5 April this year, my neighbour Torrie’s sister Vicki died during an operation in a Nairobi…
King’s Indian
The King’s Indian Defence is one of Black’s most dynamic reactions to closed openings such as d4/c4 and Nf3. Black…
no. 560
White to play. This position is from Michalik-Jirasek, Prague 2019. The game is only just out of the opening but…
Take three
In Competition No. 3104 you were invited to encapsulate the life story of a well-known person, living or dead, in…
2414: Matchplay
Seven unclued entries had the same relationship to an eighth (appearing as the two other unclued lights). Across 1 …
to 2411: Left Out
The unclued lights are famous LEFT-HANDED people. First prize Tony Hankey, London W4Runners-up Chris Butler, Borough Green, Kent; Julie Sanders,…
Britain is becoming more meritocratic, not less
You have to admire the Sutton Trust’s PR skills. For those who don’t know, the Sutton Trust is a social…
Sports journalism in Britain is being attacked by an American predator
Forty years ago the football transfer market went crazy: the British record was broken four times in 1979, more than…
Dear Mary: How do I handle the dreaded ‘B word’ at supper parties?
Q. I have lost many friends and acquaintances by discussing Brexit and finding fundamental differences of opinion. Recently I have…
I didn’t know kosher food this good existed: Decks in Tverya reviewed
Decks is a restaurant built on the Sea of Galilee. It is Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu’s favourite restaurant (it is…
Watch out for ‘watch on’
In Casablanca, Mr and Mrs Leuchtag resolve to speak English to each other in preparation for emigration to America. Mr…










































































