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The Spectator

9 August 2025 Aus

Grave mistake

Recognising Palestine will be a disaster for the West

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Bridge of shame

For many years, Australians have marvelled with pride at the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, a symbol of all that is…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Carr crash on the Harbour Bridge

A direct hit for Hamas, a triumph for the Ayatollah

Features Australia

Canberra’s iron bed

Both sides of politics are pushing conformity

Features Australia

Enemies through the gate

We’ve abandoned our own defences

Features Australia

Net zero lawfare

Climate governance vs democratic sovereignty

Features Australia

Grave mistake

Recognising Palestine will be a disaster for the West

Features Australia

To sum up Tom Lehrer and John Stone

The certainty of being right – or left

Features Australia

Banging the net zero drum

I’ve said it before... the answer lies in the net zero ‘science’

Features

Features

Will Ben Stokes be fit for the Ashes?

What a marvellous summer this has been for Test cricket, which is sadly at risk of becoming an endangered species.…

Features

How my family loved – and lost – the Telegraph

As the Telegraph moves slowly towards Arab ownership – 15 per cent to start, and who knows what in the…

Features

Dinner party talk won’t help Gaza

I’m one of the Silent People who sit on the sidelines of the great political events and debates of the…

Features

Inside the Mohammed Hijab trial

Mohammed Hijab sat at the back of the courtroom and ate doughnuts while his lawyer, Mark Henderson, delivered his closing…

Features

Motherland: how Farage is winning over women

On the campaign trail in the Midlands ahead of May’s local elections, a journalist asked Nigel Farage: ‘Do you have…

Features

Britain is hooked on car finance

It’s unnerving to think how close Britain came to financial disaster last Friday, ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on…

Notes on...

I’m learning to swim – at 37

It’s humiliating to admit that at 37, I can’t swim. I’ve spent most of my life embarrassed about not having…

Features

The tragic decline of children’s literature

The other day, leafing through T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which enchanted me as a child, I was…

Features

Giorgia Meloni’s Italian renaissance

Rome Last weekend, Rome hosted nearly a million young pilgrims to celebrate the Papal Jubilee of Youth. Part Woodstock festival,…

Features

The Catholic influencers spreading the word of God

Vatican City In an auditorium just outside St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sat solemnly…

The Week

Letters

Letters: What Trump has got right

Trumped up charges Sir: I am a huge admirer of Max Hastings, whose contribution to our knowledge and understanding of…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: Migrant treaty kicks in, car finance claim kicked out and a nuclear reactor on the moon

Home A treaty with France came into operation by which perhaps 50 small-boat migrants a week could be sent back…

Diary

Welcome to the Age of Jerks

How screwed is Britain? I’ve checked with the Impartiality Police. They said stick to the facts. Like many ailing, ageing…

Leading article

Hiroshima and the continuing urgency of the atomic age

In August 1945, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire was stationed on the Pacific island of Tinian as an official British observer…

Barometer

How bad can August storms get?

Injury time England bowler Chris Woakes won a standing ovation for coming out to bat against India at the Oval…

Ancient and modern

How the Spartans got fighting fit

Donald Trump has brought back the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, once used in state schools to gauge young…

Columnists

Any other business

Was the car finance judgment fair?

I must modestly doubt that the Supreme Court justices took account of my 12 July column in their ruling on…

The Spectator's Notes

The problem with experts

Danny Kruger’s brave defence of Christianity in the history of this country, which he recently delivered to an empty House…

Columns

The lies of the land

You can gauge the fragility of an ideology by the blind fury with which it reacts to questioning. So it…

Columns

My victory over Mohammed Hijab

One of the occupational hazards of being a journalist is being hounded by litigants. Indeed, one of the reasons why…

Columns

Haircuts are a human right!

During the immigration deluge in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems one Afghan and one Indian national…

Columns

The return of Russiagate

In June, Tulsi Gabbard found herself in a difficult position. As a dovish Iraq war veteran who happens to be…

Books

More from Books

Mossad’s secret allies in Operation Wrath of God

Aviva Guttmann reveals how the intelligence-sharing network the Club de Berne aided Israel in avenging the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre

More from Books

Successful modern design follows no rules

The greatest designers have a unique way of seeing things – a vision that is essentially intuitive, says Google’s User Experience guru Maggie Gram

More from Books

It was drug addiction that killed for Elvis, not his greedy manager

‘Colonel’ Tom Parker may have struck a hard bargain to fund his compulsive gambling habit, but his devotion to Presley was total, says Peter Guralnick

More from Books

Progress is destroying the planet: the rants of a self-hating American

Poverty is increasing and freedom contracting, says Samuel Miller McDonald – and exploitative white Americans, from Abraham Lincoln onwards, are largely to blame

More from Books

A precocious protagonist: Vera, or Faith, by Gary Shteyngart, reviewed

No wonder clever ten-year old Vera is suffering intense anxiety in Manhattan, what with problems at school, her birth mother vanishing and the wider American world in turmoil

More from Books

A road trip like no other – crossing America by Greyhound bus

Joanna Pocock made the journey in 2006, then again 17 years later – and was shocked by the environmental changes she witnessed

More from Books

The boundless enthusiasm of Asa Briggs

A prodigy from the start, the tireless historian left his fellow academics panting behind him in a long and distinguished career

More from Books

The powder keg of 1980s New York

Ed Koch’s mayoralty is beset by violent crime, corruption, racism, Aids and a crack epidemic, with Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump further tormenting him where possible

Lead book review

‘I’ve taken to sleeping in my teeth’ – the wartime admissions of T.S. Eliot

‘I’m getting to be a wambling old codger’…‘I haven’t got enough phlegm to undress’, writes the poet, exhausted by readings and broadcasts, in letters spanning 1942-44

Arts

Australian Arts

Getting down and dirty

It’s splendid to be sitting at the very front of the Playhouse watching a new musical from the Melbourne Theatre…

Pop

The terrifying charisma of Liam Gallagher

You’d have thought Wembley Stadium was a sportswear convention, so ubiquitous were the three stripes down people’s arms from all…

Exhibitions

Wittily wild visions: Abstract Erotic, at the Courtauld, reviewed

If you came to this show accidentally, or as a layperson, it could confirm any prejudices you might have about…

Theatre

What a slippery, hateful toad Fred Goodwin was

Make It Happen is a portrait of a bullying control freak, Fred Goodwin, who turned RBS into the largest bank…

Arts feature

Rattigan’s films are as important as his plays

A campaign is under way to rename the West End’s Duchess Theatre after the playwright Terence Rattigan. Supported as it…

Classical

The excruciating tedium of John Tavener

The Edinburgh International Festival opened with John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple, and I wish it hadn’t. Not that…

Cinema

A mafia drama like no other

The Kingdom is a mafia drama like no other. It’s directed by Julien Colonna whose father was a Corsican mob…

Television

Worth watching for Momoa’s gibbous-moon buttocks alone

If you enjoyed Apocalypto – that long but exciting Mel Gibson movie about natives being chased through the jungle with…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

Much of the advice you received as a child is now redundant. For example, don’t even think about telling an…

Aussie Life

Language

From time to time there are journalists who like to aggrandise their humble trade by claiming they are ‘speaking truth…

Drink

North Uist’s whisky is one to watch

There are at least two Long Islands. One of them, eternally famous for The Great Gatsby, is a fascinating blend…

Mind your language

The mysteries of ‘spoof’

‘Spook or spoof?’ asked my husband, throwing a copy of the paper over to me, and only missing by a…

No sacred cows

The case for an independent Kent

I’m just back from Vancouver, where I was speaking at a fundraiser for the Free Speech Union of Canada. At…

The Wiki Man

Land value and the Somebody Else’s Problem paradox

‘The Somebody Else’s Problem field can be run for years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies…

Best life

The day I went to Noel Gallagher’s house for tea

In front of me, a sea of lads in bucket hats and Adidas, with pints. Behind me, a sea of…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: Was I wrong to strip my guest’s bed before she left?

Q. My friend has had an irritating experience in our local cinema. She speaks fluent French and teaches it in…

Real life

Deluded Americans are descending on Ireland

The American girl was listing her reasons for moving to Ireland in protest at Donald Trump. ‘I cannot stay in…

More from life

The glorious richness of rillettes

I admit to feeling a little intimidated by charcuterie. I have a clutch of books on my shelf all laying…

Wild life

My clandestine night at the theatre

Kenya The poster for the Edinburgh University Shakespeare Company’s production of Much Ado About Nothing had a hippie design, with…

Competition

Spectator Competition: Popular demand

For Comp. 3411 you were invited to submit a passage or poem on the subject of dynamic pricing. Thanks to…