The Spectator
5 January 2019 Aus
A populist surge in the May 2019 elections could change the face of the EU forever
Australia
ScoMo’s last chance
As election year dawns, polls point to a looming Coalition electoral catastrophe at the hands of Bill Shorten and Labor.…
Australian Columnists
Australian notes
Students lacking the basics I am a law professor at the University of Queensland, a G8 university and one of…
Mentawai diary
The Mentawais are a chain of islands off Sumatra, Indonesia, the lower southwest coast of which has the highest concentration…
Submarine notes
The build-process for our new subs will be disastrous Of all of the possible solutions to Australia’s need for submarines,…
Presidential notes
Insiders and Outsiders Buckle up, US political junkies! We are now just moments away from the starting gun being fired…
Australian Features
Live and don’t die
Nakhane was twenty-years old when, in the eyes of his community, he became a man. It was aged 20 that…
Activists heeding the Voice
The Land Rights campaign that took hold in the 1950s has never been about improving the lot of Aborigines but…
The deeper consternation of the Asia Bibi scandal
By now you are probably familiar with Asia Bibi. Accused of blasphemy while working in the fields near her home…
Meet Paris in a canter
The choice for Australia at the general election is between a slow or an accelerated decline. Managed decline is à…
Features
A populist surge in the May 2019 elections could change the face of the EU forever
There is a strange pre-revolutionary atmosphere in Brussels. At the various receptions and dinners before we broke up for Christmas,…
Europe is a continent in crisis – where lo-vis people now wear high-vis jackets
The ‘yellow vest’ protests against President Emmanuel Macron that swept through Paris and other French cities last month have evoked…
Iran’s boat people — and why they’re coming to Britain
When the migrant crisis started, about three years ago, it was seen as a mainly Syrian affair. Caught in the…
Can men call women ‘girls’?
Talking to someone in her mid-twenties recently, I mentioned someone else of the same age. ‘She’s a really talented girl,’…
The Iolaire was packed with island men who could have sailed her home with ease
The centenaries of the Great War came to a close in November with commemorations of the 1918 Armistice. But one…
‘Brexit unleased something monstrous’: James Graham interviewed
‘I try to interpret the most generous version of somebody’s actions,’ says the dramatist James Graham. This rare ability to…
Booze, cigarettes and Auberon Waugh: Remembering The Spectator’s 1970s revival
‘The Spectator, having quite recently been a very bad magazine, is at present a very good one.’ Those gratifying words…
Tuning up to Linz
You never know who you might meet on a river cruise. It was my 89-year-old father-in-law, Noel, who first recognised…
Beautiful untamed Trieste, aka the Capital of Nowhere
‘Welcome to the free territory of Trieste,’ reads the sign in the shop window. ‘US and UK come back!’ For…
Gibraltar, the rock of ages past
How lazy, snobbish and wrong it is to mock Gibraltar for the lager and fish and chips clichés. Yes, you…
Julie Burchill: Why I’ve given up cocaine
It always amuses me at this time of year to observe the fuss people make about quitting booze for a…
The Week
A dozen migrants in Kent is not a crisis. But government panic could turn it into one
It has been a messy start to the new year for Sajid Javid. For months now, migrants using small boats…
Portrait of the week: A migrant ‘crisis’, Gatwick drone awards and Donald Trump to withdraw troops from Syria
Home The number of would-be migrants known to have reached England in small boats from France in the last two…
The telltale signs your child is texting about Jeeves and Wooster
You’ll be relieved to learn my penguin is back. ‘How long was it gone?’ you ask. About six months. ‘And…
A model president
From The Spectator, 4 January 1919: President Wilson arrived in London on Thursday week, and was greeted with full expression…
How the year began
Why are our years structured as they are? Censorinus in his de die natali (‘Birthday Book’) for his chum Caerellius…
How Spanish was the Spanish flu?
Paths of infection 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the height of the Spanish flu pandemic which is believed to…
Letters: Is this a solution to the post-Brexit world?
Lords reform Sir: How astonishing that the historian Robert Tombs (‘Beyond Brexit’, 15 December) should think that the Lords might…
Columnists
Will 2019 be Jeremy Corbyn’s year?
It’s hard to think of a time when an opposition leader has had such a promising start to the new…
The BBC’s quest to make Watership Down woke
For a while, as a 13-year-old, I was obsessed with rabbits — the consequence of having read Watership Down by…
We don’t need new categories for sexuality – we need to abolish categories
Long-suffering Spectator readers deserve a seasonal break from yet another Remoaner diatribe from me. My last on this page, making…
Why flee France?
Pitching your tent for weeks on end in the cold and mud, with no power or plumbing. Running in a…
A seven-year winter or a pleasant 2019? Your guess is as good as mine
A friend reminds me that she sold her house last summer because I warned her 18 months ago that Brexit…
Books
How Calouste Gulbenkian became the richest man in the world
Whenever I find myself visiting some great historic house, I always like to break off from gawping at tapestries to…
Let there be night: adventures in the dark
Edward S. Curtis’s 1914 photograph, ‘Dancing to Restore an Eclipsed Moon’, shows the Kwakiutl tribe of North American Indians circling…
The intoxicating languor of the Caribbean
Ian Fleming’s voodoo extravaganza Live and Let Die finds James Bond in rapt consultation of The Traveller’s Tree by Patrick…
The absurd struggle to claim ownership of Kafka
Benjamin Balint’s Kafka’s Last Trial is a legal and philosophical black comedy of the first water, complete, like all the…
Tear-stained ramblings that remained unsent
The deserved success of Shaun Usher’s marvellous anthology Letters of Note has inspired several imitators, and Caroline Atkins’s sparkling collection…
The age of chivalry was an age of devilry
Agatha Christie’s spirit must be loving this poisonous new historical entertainment. Eleanor Herman has already enjoyed the success of Sex…
Casanova: the scandalous libertine who seduced his own daughter
This monumental unabridged audio production of Casanova’s memoir The Story of My Life in three volumes covers his first 49…
Arts
Dick Clement on Porridge, Kirk Douglas and having seven projects on the go
Given their track record, you might think that Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais would be spared the struggles that…
How did the BBC’s podcast Unexpected Fluids ever get made?
You may have noticed the flood of podcasts that’s been pouring out of the BBC since the launch of its…
Comparing Peanuts to existentialism is an insult – to Peanuts
For the hundredth, possibly the thousandth, time, Lucy van Pelt offers to hold the football for Charlie Brown so he…
A horror show that appeals to the intellect but not the gut: The Tell-Tale Heart reviewed
The Tell-Tale Heart is based on a teeny-weeny short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The full text appears in the…
January as you would wish it: Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs reviewed
The Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs is January as you would wish it. No slush, no new-year sales, no streaming chest…
I don’t just recommend you see The Favourite. I command it
The Favourite is a period romp set during the reign of Queen Anne, but it’s not your average period romp.…
Beware of Pity
Festivals are an opportunity to present performances that might not otherwise be seen; there are several in this year’s Sydney…
Life
In praise of pomposity
Gstaad My annual end-of-year party in the Bagel was a bust. Too many people brought their friends and I ended…
From Baroness Trumpington to bad sex: my Christmas party week
The Airbnb accommodation at Paddington, chez Mohammed, was a fourth-floor room measuring about nine feet by five. As well as…
A festive rapprochement with the ex-builder boyfriend
1 January. Rooms left in house to decorate: 1 (only the attic, therefore doesn’t count).Walls plastered by self with no…
Racing in 2018 gave us plenty to celebrate
I don’t know who coined the old racing saying ‘The only person who remembers who came second is the guy…
Game of the year
The time has come again when I award the accolade of most spectacular game of the year. It adds lustre if…
no. 535
Black to play. This is a variation from today’s game Aronian-Kramnik, Berlin 2018. How can Black briskly conclude his kingside…
Out with the auld
In Competition No. 3079 you were invited to supply a new anthem to welcome 2019, starting with the first line…
2389: All change
The unclued lights can be paired in some way or other. One is of two words. Across 1 Distrain…
2387: On the Spot
The HISPANIOLA was the ship that brought the other unclued answers to TREASURE ISLAND in the novel by R L…
The great awokening
Is the social justice movement that’s sweeping British and American universities a secular religion? The core beliefs of the members…
Identity is just as important as wealth. Why don’t economists get that?
It has become commonplace for news reports to refer to almost any civic unrest, or even unusual patterns of voting,…
Dear Mary: is it ever acceptable to use a dental brush at the dinner table?
Q. Whenever I go to the theatre or cinema with any man of 60-plus, he falls asleep, even when the…
Barolo, the only comfort in a world full of chaos
It appeared to be an uneven contest. A few friends were meeting for a festive wine-tasting, to compare and contrast…
Word of the week: Moral hazard
‘Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads,’ said my husband, tossing an imaginary coin. The same improbability was amusing when Rosencrantz won the…
