The Spectator
4 February 2023 Aus
Lubricating his Voice
Australia
Lubricating his Voice
Before they were even elected – and in fervent hope that they wouldn’t be – this magazine warned that an…
Australian Features
Features
The Week
Green and pleasant
To listen to many environmental campaigners, you would think that Britain was a toxic wasteland. They tell us that our…
Columnists
The art of losing
There’s a new default conversation for Tory MPs at any Westminster drinks party: is this 1992 or 1997? Is the…
When fantasy meets reality
Once upon a time, a fox with a large bushy tail and a disingenuous smile changed his name from Reynard…
The magnetic clumping of the Met police
I have a puzzle for the Metropolitan police – a mystery that only they can solve. Why, if the Met…
America’s colour blindness
How many black cops does it take to commit a racist hate crime? The latest correct answer is ‘five’. That’s…
Unilever’s next boss won’t put purpose before profit
Does a change of chief executive at Unilever, the British-based shampoo-to-Marmite multinational, signal the demise of the fashion for corporate…
Books
Voice of reason
Governments and the woke elite are falling over themselves with taxpayer and shareholder money to promote the seriously dangerous proposal…
The seeds of the kingdom
Salman Rushdie returns to India with a full-throated mix of history, magic realism and dazzling storytelling, says James Walton
The price of love
The heartbroken father endlessly relives his son’s suicide, raking over every moment of Jack’s battle with depression and drug addiction
Eureka moments
Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes viewed mathematics in a very different way to us, but Reviel Netz helps us glimpse the minds of antiquity’s great thinkers
Chainsaw murder
Criminal syndicates, corrupt officials and faceless assassins now control the increasingly depleted rainforest, killing or enslaving all who stand in their way
A Sisyphean task
In homage to St Magnus, the stonemason Beatrice Searle carries a heavy load from Orkney to Trondheim, following an ancient pilgrims’ way
The road from Rhodes
Stella Levi, an Auschwitz survivor, recalls the vibrant, long-established Jewish community that existed in the Dodecanese before the Nazi deportations in 1944
Nursing grievances
When Florence Nightingale was joined in Scutari by groups of volunteer nuns, tensions among them soon imperilled the entire female nursing experiment
Who could resist Elmo?
In 1993, Natasha Lance Rogoff was tasked with introducing the American puppets to Russia in the hope of cultivating peace, love and understanding
The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican
Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty’s thrilling mission to save the lives of 6,500 Jews and Allied soldiers in Nazi-occupied Rome doesn’t quite get the memorial it deserves
The Roman circus
Brutality might be expected of a people who fed each other to lions – but it extended even to the elephants the Romans regarded as soulmates
Arts
Snatches of poignancy
Some decades ago when David Foster Wallace was proceeding to write the great confounding masterpiece of his generation Infinite Jest…
Still in the game
The Last of Us is widely being hailed as the best video game adaptation ever. Maybe. But it’s still a…
What a drag
Sound of the Underground is a drag show involving a handful of cross-dressers who spend the opening 15 minutes telling…
Screen time
A classical concert programme is like a set menu, and for this palate the most tempting orchestral offering in the…
Weight watchers
I can’t work out if Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser as a man weighing 600lb – that’s…
New life on old bones
Folk is the Schiphol of Scottish music. Eventually, every curious traveller passes through. From arena rockers to rappers, traditional music…
The only way is Sussex
In a national vote on which county’s landscape best embodies Englishness, every county would presumably vote for itself. But when…
‘I’ve ended up looking for pixies’
Revd Steve Morris talks to former Damned drummer Rat Scabies about his journey from punk rock to the Holy Grail
Life
Aussie life
Apparently, Melbourne will soon overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city. I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing,…
Language
Jeremy Butterfield (the former editor-in-chief of Collins dictionaries) has written recently about nursey rhymes, and how they teach the basics…
2590: Have a go
Seven unclued lights (all real words) are 36s minus one letter. A further 36 formed from the omitted letters will…
Icon of the Blair years
Restaurant and dog years are similar, and so the Wolseley, which is 20 this year, seems as if it has…
Border wars
If you think the Calcutta Cup is just any old rugby match between England and Scotland, then the latest in…
Breton galette complête
When we were little we used to go on holiday to the same place in Brittany, a picturesque, quiet coastal…
Big Brother is watching me
About six months ago I was contacted by Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, and asked if I…









































































