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The Spectator

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Wilful blindness

The appalling massacre of Australian Jews at Bondi Beach on the eve of Hanukkah did not come out of nowhere.…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Just following the rules

Bondi arrives in the nick of time

Features Australia

Marvellous Miseries of Multiculturalism

Cut immigration and bring back assimilation or end up as tribal as Beirut

Features Australia

Business/Robbery, etc

Bondi – Labor’s deadly disaster

Features Australia

Our first Islamist terror attack

A century has passed but not much has changed

Features Australia

Sorrow Without Reckoning

Bondi, Islamism, and mistaking posture for judgment

Features Australia

Limit the right to vexatious protests

Don’t give the pro-Palestine mob a megaphone

Features Australia

We have been warned

A burgeoning bureaucracy serves itself not the public

Features Australia

A qualified tick

Trump gets US national security mostly right

Features Australia

A massacre foretold

Albanese shut his eyes but the writing was literally on the walls

Features Australia

Labor’s two decades tolerating antisemitism

Albanese abandons Jews merely for electoral advantage

Features

Features

I walked out of my son’s nativity play

To walk out of a public performance before the end – be it the theatre, a concert or a lecture…

Features

Should we fear falling birth rates more than over-population?

In 1980, two American academics made a bet. Julian Simon, professor of economics at the University of Illinois, predicted that…

Features

The Boring Twenties: good British fun is being strangled

A century ago, Britain had reason to despair. A generation had been lost to war, influenza was killing those who…

Features

Labour is doing all it can to kill off horse racing

In July, Victoria, Lady Starmer was photographed at Royal Ascot, celebrating with friends after backing the winner of the Princess…

Notes on...

Make mine a BuzzBallz

There are always new ways for drinks companies to make alcohol seem even more exciting. Smirnoff has added gold leaf…

Features

The march of lazy children’s books

There’s a myth that lots of us fall for/ ‘Kids’ books are so easy to write’/ And you can see…

Features

At 53, I’m training to be a priest

I have recently begun training for holy orders in the Church of England. I know, they’re getting desperate. My motivation…

Features

Christmas with my soon-to-be-ex-wife

I didn’t force any hyacinths this Christmas. Most years I plant a dozen bulbs at the end of September and…

Features

Keep children out of politics

In Citizens, his account of the French Revolution, Simon Schama wrote how the Jacobins recruited children into ‘relentless displays of…

Features

Iranians are risking everything to convert to Christianity

Apostasy – specifically, conversion to Christianity from Islam – is punishable by death in Iran. Suspected Christians are routinely imprisoned…

The Week

Barometer

What went up – and down – in 2025?

Erasmus in England The government is to rejoin the Erasmus scheme, which allows students at British universities to spend time…

Leading article

Who’s up to the challenge of restoring Britain’s prosperity?

In 1956, Malta held a referendum on joining the United Kingdom. Since the islands were economically reliant on the Royal…

Diary

Heroes have faults too

The chief function of the prime minister is to take the blame, and Sir Keir Starmer can no more escape…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: Farm tax backdown, trail hunting crackdown and anti-misogyny courses for 11-year-olds

Home The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced plans to criminalise trail hunting ‘amid concerns it is being…

Ancient and modern

How the ancients anticipated the apocalypse

What with the threat of global warming and nuclear war, the new year might start with a big bang. The…

Letters

Letters: Don’t let Labour kill off trail hunting

Man with man to dwell Sir: Your editorial (‘All ye faithful’, 13-27 December) suggests that scepticism about Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s (Tommy…

Columnists

Columns

The 14 questions that will define British politics in 2026

Contemplating a new year always raises questions. Was there a Third Protocol? What was wrong with Oral-A? Can Keir Starmer…

Columns

David Walliams deserves to be cancelled

A traditional British Christmas is not complete until we have all enjoyed the seasonal cancellation of a celebrity, under the…

Columns

‘Islamist’ is a dishonest confection

Convicted last month of plotting what could have proved the worst terrorist attack in British history, Walid Saadaoui had hoped…

Any other business

Pubs, schools and water in crisis: my economic forecast for 2026

Forecasting is a mug’s game, as the Bank of England governor Mervyn King once said. But I’ll sketch a few…

Columns

Alaa Abd el-Fattah and our misplaced priorities

What would you like the priorities of His Majesty’s government to be? I have quite a long list. Sorting out…

Books

More from Books

No passive utopia: Tibetan Sky, by Ning Ken, reviewed

Tibet is portrayed as an uneasy cultural crossroads where globalisation, spirituality and the political traumas of two peoples collide in this sardonic, erudite novel

More from Books

A supernatural western: Tom’s Crossing, by Mark Z. Danielowski, reviewed

We know from the outset that things will end very darkly indeed in this epic novel set in Utah during the run-up to Halloween, 1982

More from Books

The fertile chaos of Albert Camus’s mind

A comprehensive new edition of the writer’s notebooks allows us to take a deep dive into his theories about absurdity, tragedy, nobility and death and his schemes for future stories

More from Books

The strange afterlife of This is Spinal Tap

The creators of the mother of all mockumentaries share anecdotes about the film’s origins, how it was made, why it matters and the way fiction transformed into fact

More from Books

A prolonged love affair: The Two Roberts, by Damian Barr, reviewed

A tender, evocative novel portrays the lives of the once celebrated painters Colquhoun and MacBride, from their first meeting in Glasgow to their fractious later years

More from Books

Glamour and intrigue: The Silver Book, by Olivia Laing, reviewed

A rigorously researched novel mingles fact and fiction in retelling the events that led up to the murder of the film director Pier Paolo Pasolini on 2 November 1975

More from Books

The history of modern Ireland, seen through the lives of its leaders

Reading the biographies of its 16 taoisigh, we can trace Ireland’s astonishing progress from poverty-stricken backwater to thriving liberal democracy

More from Books

The surreal drama of Helsinki’s history

Henrik Meinander tells the story of a city ravaged by plague, fire, war and occupation being constantly rebuilt and resettled over five centuries

More from Books

The diminutive dictator who ruled Spain with an iron fist

Fifty years after Franco’s death, Giles Tremlett assesses the generalisimo’s bloodstained legacy

More from Books

Margaret Atwood settles old scores

Being a Scorpio, the 85-year-old novelist explains, she ‘holds grudges’ – but the many past grievances she recalls in detail make for dispiriting reading

Lead book review

Carlo Scarpa’s artful management of light and space

The startling interventions and adaptations of a great 20th-century Venetian architect and designer are examined in detail by Federica Goffi

Arts

Australian Arts

Rebels and Rivals

It’s funny how implicated we are in the places from which we take our bearings. Memories of the Lexington-Concord bridge,…

Opera

An opera that will actually make you laugh

‘What we want is proper comedy!’ bellows the male chorus in the opening seconds of Prokofiev’s L’amour des trois oranges…

Cinema

Sublime: Song Sung Blue reviewed

Song Sung Blue is a musical biopic of the real-life Milwaukee couple who formed a Neil Diamond tribute act and…

Theatre

One for hardcore Stoppard fans: Indian Ink reviewed

Unusual. After the press night of Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard, no one leapt up and cheered. The crowd applauded…

Television

Enough with torture-porn TV

Has anyone got to the end of Malice yet? I’m halfway through – at the time of writing, anyway –…

Exhibitions

Constable, not Turner, changed the course of painting

Flanders and Swann; Tom and Jerry. Some things come in pairs. Like Turner and Constable, even though our two most…

The Listener

Who let Men Without Hats make a new album?

Grade: D A Montreal band led by a Ukrainian/Canadian called Ivan Doruschuk, with a histrionic baritone, famous solely for having…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

Less than two months after its imposition, the world’s first children’s social media ban is already exceeding targets, with a…

Aussie Life

Language

Let’s begin the year by summarising the ‘Words of the Year’ chosen by the world’s great dictionaries to represent last…

Competition

Spectator Competition: Forward thinking

For Competition 3430 you were invited to write a rhyming prophecy for 2026. Joe Houlihan’s closing couplet encapsulates the tenor…

No sacred cows

I’ve been duped by the Toby hoaxers

Going to see QPR on Boxing Day has become a tradition in the Young household – and not because we…

The Wiki Man

Where are you on the tightwad scale?

I once stood in a queue behind a Scotsman checking out of a hotel in Germany. After he had finished…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: How do we stop our generous host putting us in the worst room?

Q. Around this time of year a successful friend likes to rent an expensive ski chalet with cook and fill…

Drink

There’s nothing to fear from Madeira

Perhaps because of the Flanders and Swann song in which a louche older gentleman tries to lure a younger lady…

Real life

The ‘lovely boy’ who’s ruining our lives

We spent an hour in the Garda station trying to explain ourselves to a flame-haired police lady. She sat with…

Dolce vita

Could our chicken-killing dog sniff out a fortune?

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna Maria, the boisterous new vizsla who gives the old one, Rocco, such a hard time, was in…