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The Spectator

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Australia

Leading article 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

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

Simon Collins

You keep yourself nice, you shake the right hands. You spend decades cultivating the good opinion of punters of every…

Australian Features

Features Australia

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…

Features Australia

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…

Features Australia

Lawyers and law schools

Among a certain, shall we say more mature, segment of the population there is a lingering sense that lawyers as…

Features Australia

Legislating free speech

What is happening to Israel Folau should not happen in a free society. GoFundMe’s hypocritical decision to shut down a…

Features Australia

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…

Features Australia

Demography is destiny

When Sky News asked Australian Labor MP Anne Aly why she opposed the Coalition’s tax cut plan, she cited ‘the…

Features Australia

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

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…

Features

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…

Notebook

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…

Features

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…

Features

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…

Features

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…

Features

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,…

Notes on...

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

Leading article

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

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…

Diary

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…

Barometer

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…

Ancient and modern

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

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

World Politics

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…

Rod Liddle

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…

Mary Wakefield

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…

James Delingpole

Smart motorways are very stupid

‘An attempted improvement which actually makes things worse.’ The Germans have a name for this — Verschlimmbesserung — and I…

Any other business

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

A snapshot of George holding his infant daughter on Chapel Sands provides a key to the family mystery.

Lead book review

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…

Vampire bats, like succubi, prey on sleeping men at full moon in a 19th-century engraving

Books

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…

An inflatable boat with 47 migrants is rescued off Libya’s coast in January 2019. Credit: Getty Images

Books

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…

Niven Govinden. Credit: Dan Lepard

Books

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,…

Barry Lopez. Credit: John Clark

Books

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…

‘The Bibliophile’, by Johann Hamza (1850–1921)

Books

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…

Karoline Kan

Books

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…

An illustration from Emperors, Admirals and Chimney Sweepers by Peter Marren

Books

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…

The Apollo 11 astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin. Credit: Getty Images

Books

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…

Growing up in the wooded hills round Limpsfield, the girls climbed trees, built huts, made fires and skinned rabbits

Books

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,…

Stars rotate behind the Copernicus Monument in Chicago. Credit: Getty Images

Books

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

Untitled #122, from the Fashion series, by Cindy Sherman

Arts feature

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,…

Himesh Patel as Jack in Yesterday

Cinema

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,…

Pop

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…

Opera

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…

Doon Mackichan as Sondra and John Malkovich as Barney Fein in David Mamet’s Bitter Wheat

Theatre

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…

Television

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…

Mane event: shaggy blond David Coverdale

Music

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…

Emily Maitlis (Rex)

Radio

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…

Culture Buff

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

High 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…

Low life

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…

Real life

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…

Wild life

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…

Bridge

Bridge

I’m just back from an exhilarating week in Istanbul, where I was lucky enough to be partnering Tom Paske in…

Chess

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…

Chess puzzle

no. 560

White to play. This position is from Michalik-Jirasek, Prague 2019. The game is only just out of the opening but…

Competition

Take three

In Competition No. 3104 you were invited to encapsulate the life story of a well-known person, living or dead, in…

Crossword

2414: Matchplay

Seven unclued entries had the same relationship to an eighth (appearing as the two other unclued lights).   Across 1   …

Crossword solution

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,…

No sacred cows

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…

Spectator sport

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

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…

Food

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…

Mind your language

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…