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The Spectator

30 November 2024 Aus

Last year’s model

Is woke going out of fashion?

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Crossroads

It is hard to work out Labor’s priorities, by which we mean Labor’s priorities in destroying this nation. On virtually…

Australian Columnists

Australian Notes

Australian notes

On 30 November Britons and Australians alike celebrate the 150th birthday of a great, but largely forgotten man: Winston S.…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Decline of the Aussie judge

Would you put your fate in their hands?

Features Australia

No light on the Hill

On the throbbing background of Australia’s greatest mining town

Features Australia

Together in the fight

Australia, America and Japan announce a further alliance

Features Australia

Is Trump a conservative?

From neo-cons and reo-cons to arch-cons and rom-cons, please define us first!

Features

Features

The cinema is the worst place to watch a film

I’ve always loved cinema, but hardly ever cinemas. It’s no surprise to me that movie-going audiences are in decline. Ticket…

Features

Who can afford to send Christmas cards any more?

At this time of year I’d usually be writing dozens of Christmas cards, with a Snowball to hand, heavy on…

Features

Russia’s sabotage campaign against the West

When a DHL cargo plane crashed while approaching Vilnius airport on Monday, killing one of the crew, it looked like…

Features

The rise of Romania’s right-wing disruptor

Strange things are happening again in global politics. In Romania, a former UN sustainability adviser who has made admiring remarks…

Notes on...

The rise and fall of Smithfield Market

Smithfield has been the beating heart of London’s meat industry for more than 800 years. Located at the middle point…

Features

The sickness benefit trap

Now that I’m no longer editor of this magazine, I can admit that I spent the election night of 1997…

Features

‘I was much more disposable than I believed’: an interview with Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson is enjoying himself back at The Spectator. ‘My place of former employment,’ the former editor booms as he…

Features

We’re all caught in the insurance trap

In they pour, one after another, cheerily thudding on to the doormat: ‘Thank you for insuring with us again! Now,…

Features

The SAS have been betrayed in the name of human rights

The SAS are worried. Britain’s most elite military unit have come face to face with the IRA, the Taliban and…

The Week

Leading article

Labour’s little helper: the CBI is failing British business

What is the Confederation of British Industry for? Indeed, who is it for? The soi-disant voice of British business held…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: Storm Bert, Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire and Putin gives cockatoos to North Korea

Home A white paper outlined measures to counter economic inactivity (which had risen by September to 41.2 per cent among…

Diary

The Westminster Wag to watch

Surely charity is about helping others, not massaging your own ego? Ed Sheeran’s boycott of Band Aid is yet another example of…

Letters

Letters: Labour’s attack on farmers

Losing the plot Sir: Your leading article ‘Blight on the land’ (23 November) is right to call out the hypocrisy…

Barometer

Who chooses assisted suicide in Canada?

Sign of the times A petition for an immediate general election gathered 2.7 million signatures in five days.   What are…

Ancient and modern

Anger management, ancient Greek-style

A professor of neurophysiology has announced that anger is a good thing with a ‘very useful purpose’, unless it turns…

Columnists

Any other business

The dark side of Black Friday

How is it possible that we’re still reading headlines about the £4 billion fundraising from the Gulf that saved Barclays…

Columns

I hope you didn’t sign that petition

Did you sign it, then? And if so, what were your expectations? That Sir Keir Starmer would look at the…

Columns

What Scott Bessent’s appointment means for Trump 2.0

How rare it is to be given a second chance. That’s what the American people have handed Donald Trump. His…

Columns

How to get on the housing ladder

It is always interesting to watch the debates that roil a nation. So far as I can see, the current…

Columns

Why Reform has Wales in its sights

A spectre is haunting Wales. Fresh from Reform’s election victories in Westminster, Nigel Farage is turning his attention westwards, to…

Books

Lead book review

Besieged Odesa is still caught in a conflict of identities

Older citizens have identified with Russia all their lives – and Russian is still commonly spoken everywhere. But young Odesans are now using more Ukrainian as a symbol of resistance

More from Books

Who’s still flying the flag for Britpop?

Alex James’s embrace of the term distinguishes him from his contemporaries. Miranda Sawyer reminds us of how much of the best 1990s music fell outside Britpop’s retromania

More from Books

The subversive message of Paradise Lost

The great poem is mostly about revolution: how much individuals can revolt against God, father, church and king without bringing all the heavens down upon their heads

More from Books

A father’s love: Childish Literature, by Alejandro Zambra, reviewed

The Chilean writer contributes obliquely to the fledgling genre of fatherhood literature, combining family vignettes with literary criticism and a ‘diary’ addressed to his infant son

More from Books

Fortitude, emotional intelligence and wit – the defining qualities of Simon Russell Beale

The Shakespearean actor has taken on 18 of the great roles since his first gig at the RSC in 1985 and recalls them with insight, sensitivity and a sharp passion for language

More from Books

The report of Christianity’s death has been an exaggeration

Immigration is revivifying congregations, with many people showing signs of spiritual openness, in contrast to the bare-knuckle rationalism that characterised New Atheism, says Rupert Shortt

More from Books

The curse of distraction: Lesser Ruins, by Mark Haber, reviewed

A former college professor prepares to write his long-gestated book on Montaigne, but finds his mind wandering from 1970s nudism to Balzac’s coffee dependency

More from Books

Seeking forgiveness for gluttony, sloth and other deadly sins

The neurologist Guy Leschziner explores the medical conditions that might underlie extremes of human behaviour in a fascinating study that combines biology and psychology

More from Books

Not for the faint-hearted: She’s Always Hungry, by Eliza Clark, reviewed

An unsettling collection of stories loosely connected by the theme of hunger contains graphic descriptions of violence and cannibalism – as the publishers see fit to warn us

More from Books

The North American fruit tree that provides a model for economics

Bound in a web of connectivity, the serviceberry produces sufficient food for humans and other animals, and is an outstanding example of wealth consisting in ‘having enough to share’

More from Books

The Lion’s Mane, the Firework and terrible jellyfish jokes: the year’s best children’s books

Contemporary authors, including Rick Riordan, Kate di Camillo, Mark Forsyth and Michael Stavaric, share shelf space with welcome reprints, including the ever-terrifying Struwwelpeter

Arts

Australian Arts

Drunk in a midnight choir

Biography can create the most heightened sense of drama. Just at the moment SBS On Demand is showing a streamer…

Theatre

Wonderful comedy of manners: Kiln Theatre’s The Purists reviewed

A slice of the ghetto arrives at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn. The Purists is set on the stoop of…

Radio

Radio 3 Unwind is music for the morgue

Soon after the launch of Classic FM in 1992, the then controller of Radio 3, Nicholas Kenyon, asserted that his…

Television

We’re wrong to mock Do They Know It’s Christmas?

‘I hope we passed the audition,’ said an alarmingly youthful Bob Geldof at one point in The Making of Do…

Cinema

Smart, taut and stunning: Conclave reviewed

Conclave is a papal thriller based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris and it stars a magnificent Ralph Fiennes.…

Pop

Kneecap are basic but thrilling

It was Irish week in London, with one group from the north and one from the south. Guinness was sold…

More from Arts

Lovingly designed, touching and immersive: Neva reviewed

Grade: A- There’s a very faint echo of Jeff VanderMeer’s unheimlich Southern Reach Series in the new indie side-scroller Neva.…

More from Arts

Tate’s finances are on the skids and I think I know why

Among the many destructive after-effects of the pandemic, the impact of two years of lockdowns has had serious consequences for…

Dance

Deeply impressive and beautiful: Akram Khan’s Gigenis reviewed

After taking a wrong turn culminating in the misbegotten Frankenstein, Akram Khan has wisely returned to his original inspiration in…

Opera

A keeper: ENO’s new The Elixir of Love reviewed

There was some light booing on the first night of English National Opera’s The Elixir of Love, but it was…

Arts feature

‘When a work lands the excitement is physical’: William Kentridge interviewed

Watching William Kentridge’s film Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot is like being submerged inside his mind, inside the coffee pot maybe.…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

Let me be absolutely clear: when I referred to the next president of Australia’s most important military ally and economic…

Aussie Life

Language

Speccie reader Doug writes to ask about ‘mansplaining’. This comes from the same feminist language cauldron as ‘toxic masculinity’ (meaning…

Mind your language

Is being ‘infamous’ a bad thing?

John Prescott, so Dominic Sandbrook observed last week, ‘infamously exchanged punches with a protestor in full view of the cameras’.…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: How do I stop my neighbour sending WhatsApp messages IN CAPITALS?

Q. My husband has a stressful job and needs to quietly decompress at the end of the week. This is…

No sacred cows

At 61, it’s official: I’m ‘young old’

I read with some disappointment recently that the Encyclopaedia Britannica considers 61 – the age I am now – to…

Food

Ideal for winter: The Dover reviewed

For British people, America is an idea brought by cinema, and The Dover, the New York Italian bar and restaurant…

Spectator sport

Who says Test cricket is boring?

Under a dark sapphire sky, tearing across grass as green as a lick of new paint, Mitchell Starc raced in…

Chess

The World Championship

The World Championship match between Ding Liren and Dommaraju Gukesh is now underway in Singapore. The $2.5 million prize fund will…

Best life

The Parties of the Year: my verdict

As the editor’s brief for this column is ‘Fomo-inducing’, I must push the boat out for my debut and am…

The turf

My picks for Cheltenham and the Twelve

With farmers outraged, the nation’s biggest employers warning the Budget will bring increased prices and lost jobs and growth out…

Real life

The complicated etiquette of the empty train seat

The empty train seat looked inviting, and all three of us stared at it, then looked away, not daring to…

More from life

The glamour of the scallop

There is a gentle irony to the dish coquilles St Jacques: a decadent, rich preparation of one of our most…