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The Spectator

3 June 2023 Aus

Red Rishi

The Tories are trying on Labour’s clothes

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Garlic-19

A report by the Peter Doherty Institute suggests that good old Aussie garlic is good for warding off the coronavirus.…

Australian Features

Features Australia

There’s no excuse like home

Liberal moderates need a few home truths

Features Australia

Jesus with Chinese characteristics

Is the Vatican waking up to Xi Jinping?

Features Australia

Blaming victims for failures of government

Democracy is being let down by our elected officials

Features Australia

WHO d’état

Red Ted’s big green plan for world domination

Features Australia

The Voice has a secret weapon

Beware the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Features Australia

Political and cultural corruption have wrecked New Zealand

Here’s what happens when the Left divides a country by race

Features

Features

Red Rishi

The Tories are trying on Labour’s clothes

Features

Our survey says…

Navel-gazing in the civil service

Features

Generation isolation

Dr Jean Twenge on why teenagers are so unhappy

Features

Gag order

The crackdown on China’s stand-up comics

Features

Speed demons

The highs and lows of being a meth addict

Features

Down the rabbit hole

Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter

Features

Craic up

When did the Irish lose their sense of humour?

The Week

Leading article

The politics of panic

It is 15 months since Sweden’s Coronavirus Commission presented its final report. The 770-page document analysed how the country handled…

Letters

Letters

Goodbye, Jeremy Each week I opened The Spectator at Low Life in part to read that brilliant column and, more…

Columnists

Columns

The battle with the Blob

Most prime ministers fall out with the civil service at some point. David Cameron attacked the ‘enemies of enterprise’; Tony…

Columns

My northern honours list

Exciting news arrives. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has let it be known that he wants more northerners nominated for…

Columns

There will be no price cap on ‘basic items’

Sometimes it’s the little things that depress most. I groaned last week to hear the news item. The government is…

Columns

Is that enough about Phillip Schofield?

As I have noted before, there is always another circle. I thought that last week’s scandal (originally entitled ‘Suellagate’ or…

Columns

Let’s rise up in our road rage

Whether you’re more afraid of the forces of order or the forces of chaos is generally a matter of disposition.…

Books

More from Books

Rough and tumble

Harry Pearson’s tour of village games over the centuries even includes a Georgian football match where an Englishman’s severed head was used as the ball

More from Books

Chance encounters

The fates of members of a Jewish family depend on accidental meetings, the boarding of a ship or the ring of a phone in this complex fable woven from 20th-century history

More from Books

Tales from the hen house

Their jostling energy and distinct personalities bring joy not only to their owners but increasingly to children in therapy and lonely pensioners in care homes

More from Books

Among the giants

A dramatic rejuvenation drug is being distributed to a wealthy elite, enabling them to tower over the other inhabitants of the mysterious lake city of Othrys

More from Books

Last chance saloon

Florian Illies describes the charged atmosphere of Europe in the early 1930s, as people grew increasingly desperate to celebrate their last chance of freedom

More from Books

Proud to be British

Sunder Katwala, of Indian-Irish heritage, analyses the whiteness of the Remain vote, seeing Britain’s pro-European movement as a case of cosmopolitanism without diversity

More from Books

Secrets of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street

Anne L. Murphy provides a vivid picture of clients, clerks and couriers, pay and perks, cases of fraud and incompetence and the underappreciated threat of fire and violence

More from Books

An unstable world

Adapted from interviews with a trainer from Iowa, Scanlan’s novel is a disturbing portrait of violence and squalor behind the scenes at racing stables

More from Books

Literary fun and games

Academic jargon, back-scratching and literary scandals were all ripe for treatment in the long-running N.B. by J.C. column – now available in a glorious miscellany

Lead book review

Where there’s a will…

Determined sceptics will always find reasons to cast doubt on Shakespeare’s authorship, but who cares in the end, Emma Smith wonders

Arts

Australian Arts

A campy and colourful role

It’s good to report that the latest revival of The Rocky Horror Show with Jason Donovan as Frank-N-Furter is true…

More from Arts

Home truths

Can we know an artist by their house, asks Laura Freeman

Theatre

The ex factor

Mrs Doubtfire is a social comedy about divorce. We meet Miranda, a talentless, bitter mother, who tires of her caring…

Exhibitions

Shatterer of glass ceilings

Reviewing the Prado’s joint exhibition of Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana in the Art Newspaper three years ago, Brian Allen…

Pop

Metal fatigue

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything worse than Mötley Crüe in Sheffield. Nothing more tuneless, empty, vapid and dismaying.…

Television

This was England

In advance, The Gallows Pole: This Valley Will Rise was touted as a radical departure for director Shane Meadows. After…

Arts feature

All quiet on the western front

Zoe Strimpel talks to the anti-Putin Russian artists who have been cancelled since
the invasion of Ukraine

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

Imagine waking from a 50-year coma to find that the TV in your recovery room was permanently tuned to a…

Aussie Life

Language

Recently I came across the expression ‘weaponised words’– the idea that words with a standard, accepted meaning can be changed…

No sacred cows

The demonisation of Kathleen Stock

It had been billed as the most controversial debate of the year, with even Rishi Sunak intervening to say that…

Chess

English Championship

Michael Adams took first place at the Chessable English Championship in Kenilworth last weekend, winning the tournament with 6/7. In…

Drink

Discovering St Julien

Burgundy or Bordeaux? We were discussing that unending question during dinner over the weekend. I think that there is only…

The Wiki Man

The great car delusion

Suella Braverman was completely wrong to ask her civil servants to investigate the possibility of arranging a one-on-one speed awareness…

The turf

The science of horse racing

Everybody in racing is looking for an edge. With 7-4 the field, the punter is looking for a 2-1. The…

Real life

The BB wants to put my dream farm on a skip

‘Have you got your passport? Your phone? Your wallet?’ The builder boyfriend patted his pockets and told me not to…