The Spectator
7 December 2019 Aus
Australia
Our farmers have few friends
Yet again, David Flint has shown that despite being an inner-city dwelling, softly-spoken, smartly-groomed, elegantly-dressed emeritus professor of law and…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
I don’t like writing in support of politicians. It only encourages them. But Scott Morrison has been subjected to such…
Australian Features
Labour’s ugly taint of antisemitism
Religious leaders generally steer well clear of politics during election campaigns and nobody can remember when one ever before made…
Clive’s noble cause
The great Clive James died on the same day as the great Jonathan Miller but I know which one I…
Business/Robbery etc
It is not going away. Corporate leaders are increasingly stepping outside their legal requirement to serve the best interests of…
Academia rooted
The University of Sydney’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences continues to be the standard bearer for everything that is…
Teaching untruths about Jews
Physical Education teachers are caricatured as tormenting the unfit children in the class but in fact they are an essential…
London Bridge is falling down
On 30 November 2019, we were witness to a shocking display of behaviour on London Bridge, that our misandrist citizens…
Lock up the politicians
A favourite argument of the elites is that something is ‘inevitable’ or, more subtly, ‘the planets are aligned’. Blasting what…
Features
Nightmare on Downing Street: what could happen on Friday 13th?
Radicalism does not usually work out well for the Labour party. Michael Foot fought the 1983 general election on a…
What the Tories don’t understand about Corbyn voters
Until recently, the Tories seemed pretty confident about next week’s election. Despite spending three and a half years blundering over…
‘Corbyn is led by ideology, I’m led by economics’: Sajid Javid’s spending plan
If Boris Johnson wins next week, it will be on a manifesto of change. He will not deliver the fourth…
Viral videos, not leaders’ debates, could decide this election
You might well expect the final election debate, Johnson vs Corbyn head-to-head on primetime BBC, to provide the most watched…
‘You either are panto, or you aren’t’: Christopher Biggins on his favourite time of year
Christopher Biggins has managed to bag some of the nation’s favourite TV characters over the years: Lukewarm in Porridge and…
This election will change Britain – and Europe – for good
This election campaign feels unreal. Commentators focus on spending plans and personal foibles, but what will make next week’s vote…
It’s possible to talk to children about politics without leading them in one direction
My six-year-old son announced, from the back of the car, that he was backing Boris Johnson. My wife, who’s voting…
Our tree-planting obsession may do more harm than good
‘Four beef burgers is the same as flying to New York and back! FOUR BURGERS!’ When I arrived at the…
The unwritten rules of sending Christmas cards
No one sends Christmas cards any more. Except that I do, and you might, and a few other people do…
The Week
This is the most important election in modern history – so vote, and vote Tory
Next week, voters will decide the future of the government, of Brexit, and perhaps of the Union. Jeremy Corbyn has…
Portrait of the week: Terror in London, Trump in London and a resignation in Malta
Home Usman Khan, aged 28, out of prison on licence after serving eight years of a 16-year sentence for preparing…
Remembering the genius of Clive James
‘Clive James Stirs.’ That was the standard subject line for the emails I used to get from the great Australian…
What weather records were broken in 2019?
Keeping it in the family A study by the Middle East Technical University claimed to prove that the pronounced chin…
We could certainly do with a Tacitus now
As a contemporary John Clapham reported, Queen Elizabeth I ‘had pleasure in reading the best and wisest histories’, and translated…
Letters: Governments should be promoting marriage, not discouraging it for the sake of equality
Look closer to home Sir: In your interview with Boris Johnson (‘Austerity was not the way forward’, 30 November) he…
Columnists
Six weeks is too long for an election campaign
The number of parties represented in national election debate multiplies. There are now seven crowding on to television podiums and…
The Tories are right to be nervous
Despite their consistent poll lead, the Tories are anxious. There is only a week to go and in many seats…
Who are we kidding – of course terror is a political issue
It was pleasing to see that old clip of Gerry Adams endorsing Jeremy Corbyn re-emerge, just before the acts of…
The Tories will win – but with no thanks to the North
It’s time to stick my neck out. What follows is anecdotal and my hunches have often been wrong. But I…
We don’t owe Waspi women tea and biscuits
The pressure group Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) is oddly named. What their campaign opposes is pension equality. Now,…
The RMT strike is a demonstration of what to expect in a Corbyn-McDonnell regime
It’s unusual for a Governor of the Bank of England to announce his next job before Downing Street has named…
Books
As English spread over the subcontinent, India lost forever its rich Persianate literary heritage
In the seventh century, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang made an epic journey through the Gobi desert and over the…
Britain’s obsession with boxing is as deep-rooted as its devotion to cricket
Boxing has long been a British obsession, exported successfully to North America, but never widespread on the Continent. Mainland Europeans…
Will Self’s memoir of drug addiction is a masterpiece of black humour
Well, it was always going to be called Will. More than once in this terrifying, terrific book, Will Self refers…
The people’s Prince: even as a teenager the musician charmed everyone he met
Many pop stars are easy to imagine as children, as it’s a profession that doesn’t really reward growing up. Elton…
The first Puritans weren’t so much killjoys as ardent believers in honest living
‘Puritan’ is a term of abuse, and we tend to use it to refer to such figures as the nightmarishly…
Lydia Davis, like an inspirational teacher, tempts her readers into more reading
A good indicator of just how interesting and alluring Lydia Davis’s Essays proved might be my recent credit card statement.…
The Great War was enough to make grown men weep
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo it took a mere six weeks for the diplomats of Europe’s…
James Baldwin’s radicalism was part Marxist, part Christian
Great biographies try to answer questions about the complicated relationship between their subjects’ inner life and outer workings. How did…
Arts
How capitalism killed sleep
What can you make a joke about these days? All the old butts of humour are off limits. No wonder…
A museum-quality car-boot sale: V&A’s Cars reviewed
We were looking at a 1956 Fiat Multipla, a charming ergonomic marvel that predicted today’s popular MPVs. Rather grandly, I…
Sadistic and repellent and thrilling: Mascagni’s Iris reviewed
If you’ve ever felt that poor Madama Butterfly had a bit of a raw deal, then you really, really don’t…
Punk spirit underpinned by darkness and horror: Richard III at the Sam Wanamaker Theatre reviewed
The history plays are different. In dramas like Othello, Hamlet and Much Ado, Shakespeare laid out the plot with great…
I’ve never seen a film like it: Ordinary Love reviewed
Ordinary Love stars Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson as a long-married couple whose lives are disrupted when she is diagnosed…
The only bearable TV series these days are the ones with subtitles, like Der Pass
True to the Andrew Roberts rule that the only bearable series on TV these days are ones with subtitles, I’ve…
Smart, funny and beautifully imagined: RSC’s The Boy in the Dress reviewed
David Walliams is one of the biggest-selling children’s authors in the world (having shifted some 25 million copies in more…
Portrait of Rear-Admiral William Bligh (detail) Alexander Huey, 1814
Hero or Villain? That is the question posed about William Bligh by an exhibition currently at the Australian National Maritime…
Life
The TV show that rots young minds
How can I phrase it without sounding pompous? When very talented people dine together, it sometimes turns into a contest…
Hell is an expat dinner party
I just don’t understand it. Emigrating from Britain to France is a big step. Shifting from one culture to another…
I’ve practically solved the crime myself but still the police won’t help
‘Thank you for calling Surrey Police. We want to help you with your inquiry as quickly as possible. Did you…
The election won’t bring any joy to the racing community – whatever the outcome
Whatever the outcome of the election on 12 December, it is unlikely to bring joy to the racing community. Conservatives…
The Saric Supremacy
There is a gritty fight scene in The Bourne Supremacy, in which Jason Bourne (played by Matt Damon) faces down…
no. 583
Black to play. This is a variation from McShane–Van Foreest, Bundesliga, November 2019. I avoided this position, and the game…
Brow lines
In Competition No. 3127 you were invited to submit Shakespeare’s newly discovered ‘Woeful ballad to his mistress’ eyebrows’, as referred…
2437: Sketchy
The unclued lights (two of two words, one of which includes an apostrophe) are of a kind. Where alternative final…
to 2434: eat it!
The unclued lights, including the pair at 35/28, are CAKES. First prize John Maynard, Motcombe, DorsetRunners-up Tony Mouzer, Birmingham; Michael…
Must try harder: Labour wants to reverse a decade of progress in education
If education rather than Brexit or the NHS was the biggest issue in this election campaign, the Tories would be…
This year’s top gadgets – according to my inner chimp
I’d hoped to spend this week writing about my new Geberit Japanese-style toilet, but since the grout is not yet…
Dear Mary: Why does my feminist friend always expect me to pay for dinner?
Q. One of my very best female friends has got into the habit of lecturing me on gender equality, in…
Politics of a certain vintage – and wine to match
I wonder how they do things now at Tory headquarters. For the ’79 election, the preparations had been completed weeks…
What exactly is a narwhal?
A point that many people mentioned amid the horror and heroism of the attack at London Bridge was the enterprising…
