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The Spectator

4 October 2025 Aus

Wake up and smell the coffee

The gathering storm of the over-educated

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Harm’s way

‘Do no harm’ is the supposed motto of our medical profession, although you wouldn’t have known it if you landed…

Diary Australia

Australian diary

‘Australia has become a … how you say … shit-show, no?’ This was my first interaction upon arriving in Slovakia…

Australian Features

Features Australia

B1 goes full monty

Bungling, bumbling, bonkers Bowen

Features Australia

Albo in La-La land

Clowning around overseas with Bowen and Wong

Features Australia

Voice returns to haunt Victoria

Allan’s Treaty Bill will entrench racial division

Features Australia

Gaza, the peace plan

Here’s what’s truly shocking

Features Australia

If Osama bin Laden were alive today

How the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda has infiltrated the West

Features Australia

Wake up and smell the coffee

The gathering storm of the over-educated

Features Australia

Omitting emissions

Elephant in the climate room

Features Australia

Trump warns Albo

You’re destroying Australia

Features

Features

Learning to speak Latin and Ancient Greek can save civilisation

Finally, some good news from Oxford. The university has recently been through a gloomy patch. It slipped from the top…

Features

The luxury of French prisons

Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of the French Republic, has been convicted and sentenced to five years for a ‘criminal conspiracy…

Notes on...

Let them eat swan

How to react to Nigel Farage’s suggestion that immigrants are killing and eating swans? You can react like LBC’s Iain…

Features

Kemi Badenoch: how I plan to save the Tories

Kemi Badenoch is in ebullient form. She promises the Conservative party conference, which begins this weekend in Manchester, will be…

Features

The Tories must free themselves from the cult of Thatcher

Like every Tory Boy, I had a Margaret Thatcher poster. I put it up when I was 15 and had…

Features

How not to be a spy

Like our former ambassador to the United States, Lord Mandelson, I was once vetted by the security services. My brush…

Features

Moldova has been saved from Russian influence, but at what cost?

The European Union, guardian and champion of democracy, rightly takes a dim view when ruling parties ban their opponents, refuse…

Features

Welcome to the age of de-extinction

Colossal, a $10 billion biotech firm with a knack of grabbing headlines, has announced it is on the way to…

Features

My plot to take on the peach-tree thief

Summer is icumen to its end, but my peach tree yielded a fine crop this year, though most of it…

The Week

Letters

Letters: the Church of England still has something meaningful to say

Moscow mule Sir: While visiting Russia, James Delingpole learned from the patriarchate’s press officer that under communism the Russian Church…

Diary

What’s wrong with elitism?

There was a time when the serious business of concert-giving closed down for the summer. Artists were expected to take…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: Keir vs Nigel, ID cards and Trump’s peace deal

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, addressed delegates at the Labour party conference in Liverpool who had been issued…

Leading article

ID cards are Labour’s alibi for its failure

Questions of identity permeate our politics. What is it to be English, to be British? The Prime Minister sought to…

Barometer

What are the risks of first cousins having children?

Park life Locals were angered by the closing off of 1,500 acres of Windsor Great Park to create a secure…

Ancient and modern

How to create an educational elite

University term has started, and even more students are being taught in even larger classes. But to what end? Education…

Columnists

Any other business

Don’t surrender to soulless self-checkouts

A friend runs a small factory employing 60 skilled workers. He exports industrial components worldwide, competing with Europe for quality…

The Spectator's Notes

Sir Tony’s doomed crusade in the Holy Land

It amuses me that the two main parties most averse to the idea of honours, monarchy, chivalry etc are led…

Columns

Starmer has bought himself time. Can he use it wisely?

The Labour conference in Liverpool was a curiously upbeat affair. Much of the good spirit came from schadenfreude at the…

Columns

The Murray Test for TV drama

It is almost a century since Ronald Knox wrote his ‘Ten Commandments’ for detective fiction. Most of them still hold…

Columns

Transgenderism proves people will believe anything

For years, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has wrapped itself in a guise of medical expertise, advising…

Books

More from Books

Death and glory: the politics of the World Cup

The choice of ‘tiny boiling Qatar’ as a venue in 2022 – where thousands of construction workers lost their lives – typifies Fifa’s cynical favour-auctioning, says Simon Kuper

More from Books

The vanished glamour of New York nightlife

Booze, coke, models, parties… Mark Ronson’s vivid account of DJing in the 1990s is a celebration of a lost world

More from Books

An unheroic hero: Ginster, by Siegfried Kracauer, reviewed

When Kracauer’s protagonist is finally conscripted in the first world war, he starves himself to ‘general physical debility’ and is sent to ‘peel potatoes against the foe’

More from Books

Stray shells and suicide bombers in Kabul’s finest hotel

Lyse Doucet describes how the Intercontinental, the journalists’ refuge for decades, is increasingly targeted by the Taliban as they gain control in Afghanistan

More from Books

Auschwitz-themed novels are cheapening the Holocaust

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has spawned a host of deathcamp dramas that trivialise the Jewish tragedy, says Tanya Gold

More from Books

Hell is other tourists in Antarctica

If you’ve longed to see every penguin species in the world, think about the company you’ll be keeping, warns Jamie Lafferty

Lead book review

Since when did the English love to queue?

Far from being an ancient trait, the ‘irksome novelty’ dates from 1939, according to Graham Robb – whose idiosyncratic history of Britain corrects many erroneous beliefs

Arts

Australian Arts

Looming horror of the heart

What are we to make of dramatic classics and classics of music and dance? That very distinguished actor Bille Brown…

Theatre

A dazzling musical celebration of the 1970s

Clarkston is an American-backed production featuring a Netflix star, Joe Locke. He plays a young graduate with a terminal illness,…

Exhibitions

The best Turner Prize in years

So, the Turner Prize: where do we start? It’s Britain’s most prestigious art award, one that used to mean something…

Television

Every line in the new Alan Partridge is perfect

By now, viewers of TV thrillers are no strangers to a baffling prologue – but this week brought a particularly…

Arts feature

The art of dining

Ivan Day pulls out an old Habsburg cookbook from his library. The 300-year-old volume is so thick it’s almost a…

Classical

Pure feelgood: ENO’s Cinderella reviewed

‘Goodness Triumphant’ is the alternative title of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and you’d better believe he meant it. Possibly my reaction…

Cinema

Propulsive, funny – and what a car chase: One Battle After Another reviewed

Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest as good as everyone is saying? That it has a run time of nearly three…

Pop

Like Gabor Mate set to club beats: Lady Gaga, at the O2, reviewed

Lady Gaga’s show was to begin at 7.30  prompt, we were told. No opening act. And at 7.30 something did…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

The tendency of Australian politics to shadow British politics is never more conspicuous than when both countries are led by…

Aussie Life

Language

Writing in the Daily Telegraph James Morrow has coined the expression ‘pulling an Albo’, meaning ‘looking busy while doing nothing’.…

Drink

Drink early, drink often

As readers will be aware, and without sounding too immodest, this column is absolutely committed to diversity. In an earlier…

No sacred cows

What we can learn from Singapore

I was in Australia last week, having been invited to give the annual oration by the Robert Menzies Institute, and…

Competition

Spectator Competition: what day is it?

For Comp 3419 you were invited to write a poem to mark National Vodka Day (4 October) or another spurious…

The Wiki Man

To win, the Tories should be the party of motorists

The path to electoral success at the next election is straightforward. Just follow what I call the Channel 5 strategy.…

No life

Nutrition is a bogus creed

Time to think about my diet. A test kit arrives from the NHS screening team who want to inspect a…

Wild life

The search for a Kenyan Stonehenge

Cradle of Mankind Paleoanthropologists tried to kill me a few days ago. Luckily I was saved by Max Mutkin, a…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: do my AirPods make me look like an imbecile?

Q. My printer is broken, so I asked my neighbour to print off a letter for me. It was from…

More from life

Bacon and egg pie, the perfect throw-it-together, please-the-whole-family dish

There are a handful of elements that make me nervous about tackling particular classic recipes. First, if it’s a dish…

Real life

Why are vegans so philosophically confused?

The solar panel fitter was eating his fried breakfast when the talkative vegans came into the kitchen. They surveyed his…