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The Spectator

4 November 2023 Aus

Something to help Labor show their support

Or is Labor policy complicit with Hamas?

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Go to war but don’t kill anyone

It’s the latest mad leftist doctrine, as insisted on by the well-meaning and ever-so progressive elites, and it runs something…

Australian Features

Features Australia

The EV follies

Putting us on the road back to serfdom

Features Australia

Deadly coloniser

Iran’s tentacles threaten the free world

Features Australia

Flag and free speech abused

Pro-Palestinian protests - who pays for the police?

Features Australia

Time to drain the indigenous swamp

Who exactly has benefited from the billions in indigenous welfare?

Features Australia

Jordan’s Ark

Don’t mention the pandemic

Features Australia

Best Labor PM we never had

How Hayden exposed the fake republicans

Features Australia

The tale of Sushi Sheila

A raw slice of classic leftist lunacy

Features

Features

We needed a Covid inquiry – but this isn’t it

What is the point of the Covid Inquiry? It should be to establish which parts of the government’s pandemic response…

Features

Why Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hamas will not succeed

After three weeks of airstrikes, Israel has begun its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. The goal, in the words…

Features

‘Comedy is much more important than I thought’: John Cleese on the press, his new talk show and the power of Fawlty Towers

John Cleese enjoys tough questions. He’s currently touring America with An Evening with the Late John Cleese, and a substantial…

Features

Can the killing of innocent civilians ever be justified?

Israel has made the first, rather tentative, moves of its ground operation against Hamas – but there’s nothing tentative about…

Features

Help! I’m on a dating blacklist

There’s a online blacklist of men you should avoid dating and I’m on it. I discovered this over the summer…

Features

‘Childhood has been rewired’: Professor Jonathan Haidt on how smartphones are damaging a generation

Something strange is happening with teenagers’ mental health. In Britain, the US, Australia and beyond, the same trend can be…

The Week

Leading article

We have more to fear from social media than AI

For once, Nick Clegg had a point. At the start of this week’s Artificial Intelligence summit at Bletchley Park, our…

Letters

Letters: policing pro-Palestinian rallies isn’t an exact science

Call for common justice Sir: Rod Liddle’s piece on the true desires of Palestinians was rare in its acceptance of…

Ancient and modern

What we could learn from the classical courts

This year, in its annual Supreme Court moot trial of a famous ancient figure, the charity Classics for All charged…

Columnists

Columns

Starmer’s foreign policy problem is only just beginning

This could have been the week that Keir Starmer buckled under pressure from his party and called for a ceasefire…

Columns

Is this where world war three starts?

  Daugavpils   You can tell quite a bit about a place by the number of national flags on display.…

Columns

When righteous anger goes wrong

From abroad I’ve returned to a country where, in language to which the word ‘shrill’ hardly does justice, fellow British…

Columns

It’s time to cut our ties with Qatar

A friend of mine was recently doing business with the Qataris. Nothing strange there: a lot of people have in…

Columns

What did Hamas think was going to happen?

Much misfortune the woebegone couldn’t have seen coming: a raging fire in the house next door that spreads to yours.…

Books

More from Books

Not everything in the garden is lovely

For as long as we have been human, powerful chemicals in plants have provided us with stimulants, analgesics – and the means of murder

More from Books

The best of this year’s gardening books

Authors reviewed include Jinny Blom on design, Jenny Joseph on scented plants, Maury C. Flannery on herbaria and Francis Pryor on his Fenland haven

More from Books

Always carry a little book with you, and preserve it with great care, said Leonardo da Vinci

Despite the digitisation of everything, many of us still choose to jot down thoughts and sketches on paper, and would be bereft without a notebook to hand

More from Books

Heart of Darkness revisited: The Dimensions of a Cave, by Greg Jackson, reviewed

Conrad’s classic is updated in this sinister tale of the US government’s involvement in a morally suspect virtual reality programme

More from Books

The data-spew about Bob Dylan never ends

In his latest volume of biography, Clinton Heylin spares us no details about Dylan’s misogyny and cranky obsessions during his almighty midlife crisis

More from Books

The shocking truth about adulterated wine: it was delicious

Provided it wasn’t actually poisonous, a beefed-up burgundy in the 1970s was often preferred to a weedy pure vintage pinot noir, says Rebecca Gibb

More from Books

The misery of the Kindertransport children

Wrenched from their parents and familiar surroundings, the young refugees found safety in Britain, but were tolerated rather than cherished, says Andrea Hammel

Lead book review

Why did Jon Fosse win the Nobel Prize for literature? It’s baffling.

If Jon Fosse’s novels are experimental, they are experiments in exhausting banality, says Philip Hensher

More from Books

Books of the year I: a choice of reading in 2023

Recommendations from Andrew Motion, Jonathan Sumption, A.N. Wilson, Andrea Wulf, Peter Frankopan, Clare Mulley and many others. To be continued next week

Arts

Australian Arts

How the girls sighed

You know the year is starting to come to an end when a new production of A Christmas Carol is…

Television

Riveting and heart-wrenching: BBC1’s Time reviewed

‘Only with women’ is a phrase used by more cynical TV types for a show that takes something that’s been…

Exhibitions

‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed

‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of…

Pop

Spellbinding performance of a career-defining record: Corinne Rae Bailey, at Ladbroke Hall, reviewed

You won’t see two more contrasting shows this year than Corinne Bailey Rae performing her album Black Rainbows and Brian…

Exhibitions

The importance of lesbianism to British modernism: Double Weave, at Ditchling Museum, reviewed

The name of Ditchling used to be synonymous with Eric Gill, but since he was outed as an abuser of…

Cinema

Outstanding and eye-opening doc about North Korea: Beyond Utopia review

The documentary Beyond Utopia follows various families as they attempt to flee North Korea. It is eye-opening and outstanding. In…

Theatre

Comedy of the blackest kind: Boy Parts, at Soho Theatre, reviewed

There’s something mesmerising about watching a good mimic. And Aimée Kelly, who plays fetish photographer Irina Sturges in Soho Theatre’s…

Theatre

Real women do not behave like this: Lyonesse, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed

Lyonesse by Penelope Skinner takes a while to get going. The central character, Elaine, is a washed-up British actress (Kristin…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

Now that the referendum is behind us, we must start doing something about Australia’s burgeoning ICE problem. You wouldn’t know…

Aussie Life

Language

They say that in war truth is the first casualty – and the language of truth is certainly being butchered…

Drink

The world is a mess. Why not find escapism through wine?

In most children’s stories, the good characters live happily ever after. Works suitable for older readers tend to greater realism.…

The Wiki Man

The beauty of mid-range products

Once or twice, when on a crowded overnight flight, I have taken a sneaky stroll through the different cabins for…

No sacred cows

The conversion therapy bill is a thoroughly bad idea

I was disappointed to learn that Rishi Sunak has reconsidered his opposition to a bill banning conversion therapy. Not because…

Real life

I have moved into a house in Ireland I viewed once, then bought

With families chatting in the seats around me, a young girl knitting across the aisle, I gripped the arm rests.…

More from life

How not to speak to builders

It’s week eight of the installation of a cheap Ikea kitchen in my flat, and an Albanian builder is slumped…