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The Spectator

9 December 2017 Aus

Red meds

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Two-faced on Israel

Australia has stood against the more rotten and anti-Semitic resolutions of the United Nations. Now, however, it has distinguished itself…

Australian Columnists

Australian Notes

Australian notes

Compare and contrast So it’s coming up to a year since one Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Robin and Eric

Having been in a loving relationship for two months, Robin and Eric were hot to trot and tied the knot…

Features Australia

Ben Canaider

As readers may be aware, December began in sunny Melbourne with a deluge of biblical proportions – or so Melburnians…

Features Australia

The unacceptable cost of renewables

Parts of Europe may be tearing themselves apart politically over the vast costs of adopting renewable energy, but Australian voters…

Features Australia

Flash in the pan

Last week an unlikely event took place: something interesting happened at the Arias. The Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards…

Features Australia

Bopping with Bippera

In 2012, as James Morrison was collecting his trumpet from the baggage carousel at Cairns airport, a fan approached to…

Features Australia

Red meds

In November’s Lancet, editor Dr Richard Horton has liberated his esteemed medical journal from the shackles of science by inviting…

Features

Features

The Brexit Breakdown

Theresa May’s Brexit challenge is truly Herculean. Every time she believes she has done enough to finally move the Brexit…

Features

Does Brexit mean anything anymore?

Emma Bridgewater has, since 1985, produced pottery acceptable in tasteful middle-class kitchens. Some jars had Coffee on and some Biscuits.…

Features

Harry, Meghan and the irresistible rise of the glamocracy

The world may be dazzled by Prince Harry marrying a divorced, mixed-race American TV star. But his grand friends and…

Features

Welcome to the age of media feeding frenzies

Tony Blair once remarked, during one of the periodic feeding frenzies that engulf British politics, that public life was becoming…

Features

‘The first 100 days will be radical’ – John McDonnell on the Corbyn coup and its consequences

John McDonnell looks exhausted, slumped in his parliamentary office chair. Nobody said the revolution would be easy. Do he and…

Features

Why is China sending aid money to Surrey?

When I first hear that my well-heeled Surrey neighbourhood is receiving aid from China, I assume it must be a…

Features

Meet the anti-immigrant federalist who could well be Italy’s next prime minister

The man who could become Italy’s next prime minister is sat just opposite the entrance to the huge US and…

The Watford Locks on the Grand Union Canal

Notes on...

The truth about The Watford Gap

In a shallow dip between two unremarkable Northamptonshire hills you will find a road, a motorway, a railway and a…

The Week

Leading article

Returning jihadis must be brought to justice

At first sight, the evidence presented in David Anderson’s report into the four terror attacks committed between March and June…

Portrait of the week

DUP’s 11th-hour objection throws Brexit deal into chaos

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, was thrown into a political crisis, along with the negotiations for Brexit, during a…

Diary

Max Hastings’ Diary: Historian Sir Michael Howard and a tale of E.M. Forster and sardines

Lunch with the great Sir Michael Howard, 95 last week. During a conversation about BBC1’s Howards End, he said: ‘I…

Barometer

Stolen spikes: the strange history of the Irish border

Border skirmishes What did the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic used to look like? — In 1923 a…

Ancient and modern

Like Thasos or Naxos in ancient Greece, Brexit Britain must be punished

Since the EU does not want the UK to leave and will do everything to stop it leaving, it is…

Letters

Letters: why is the C of E still messing around with the Carlile report?

The Carlile report Sir: The Bishop of Bath and Wells tells us (Letters, 2 December) that nobody is holding up…

Columnists

The Spectator's Notes

The DUP is quite likely to cave in over ‘regulatory alignment’. Here’s why they should not

I’m afraid I have a deep faith in the Democratic Unionist Party’s capacity to cede an issue of principle in…

Rod Liddle

If Damian Green lied about looking at porn, I don’t blame him one bit

I first viewed pornography at the age of 12, when a school friend showed me a magazine called, I think,…

Matthew Parris

How I learned to stop worrying and love the monarchy

Prince Harry does not exist and soon Meghan Markle will cease to exist too. None of the royal family exist.…

Any other business

The skulking assassins of the London Stock Exchange

The revenge tragedy at the London Stock Exchange whose plot I outlined last month has reached its third act, but…

Books

The making of a happy home: cold milk for tea. A 1930s advertisement for General Electric

Lead book review

How cool is your fridge?

Mrs Thatcher once explained that she adored cleaning the fridge because, in a complicated life, it was one of the…

Books

Christmas quiz books galore

There can be few challenges more daunting for the assiduous reviewer than a pile of Christmas ‘gift’ books sitting on…

Books

The short, reckless life of Andrea Dunbar

In her debut novel, Adelle Stripe recounts the brief, defiant life of the playwright Andrea Dunbar. Dunbar was raised on…

Books

Midwinter murders: the best Christmas thrillers

It’s difficult to keep a crime series going after 11 books but Boris Akunin manages it well in All the…

Books

What will Katie Hopkins do next?

In her memoir Rude, the former Mail Online columnist Katie Hopkins reveals her true self. She does this by accident,…

A previously unpublished photograph of Dylan in 1981

Books

Bob Dylan is a modern-day Odysseus

‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’…

Portrait of Carrington by Mark Gertler

Books

Love and letters in a Bloomsbury triangle

Dora Carrington (1893–1932) was at the heart of the Bloomsbury story. As an art student, she encountered the love of…

Books

Jesmyn Ward sees dead people

The events of this book take place where the world of the living and the world of the dead rub…

The Godfather: Edward Garnett had a keen eye for talent, but was blind to modernism

Books

Edward Garnett and his diligent blue pencil

Edward Garnett, radical, pacifist, freethinker, Russophile man of letters, was from the 1890s onwards for many years the pre-eminent fixer…

Australian Books

Fame of Hall

Anne Watson’s book underlines the truth that in order to praise Jørn Utzon, whose architectural vision created the concept of…

Arts

Leslie Nielsen and Jeannette Charles in The Naked Gun

Arts feature

From good witch to female Alan Bennett: the Queen on the big screen

If cinema is propaganda, Elizabeth II can be grateful to it. Film is a conservative art form, and almost nothing…

Bear necessities: line block print, 1970, hand coloured by E.H. Shepard

Exhibitions

The star of the Winnie-the-Pooh show at V&A is E.H. Shepard

The thing about Winnie-the-Pooh, 91 years old this year, is that he’s the creature of E.H. Shepard, who drew him,…

Live Music

Gorgeous but exhausting: Jurowski/LPO at Royal Festival Hall reviewed

To get a flavour of Joseph Marx’s An Autumn Symphony, picture the confectionery counter in a grand Viennese café. Beneath…

Radio

What it feels like to hold a heart

It’s been heart week on Radio 4, celebrating the anniversary of the first ‘successful’ heart transplant in 1967, which was…

Television

Once you get over its political correctness, Netflix’s Godless is a cracker

Boy came to me the other night in a state of dismay. ‘Dad, I just turned on Match of the…

Togas, sandals, breastplates, ketchup and daggers, not guns: Julius Caesar at the Barbican

Theatre

It’s impossible to muff the role of Scrooge – yet Rhys Ifans manages: A Christmas Carol reviewed

Maximum Victoriana at the Old Vic for Matthew Warchus’s A Christmas Carol. Even before we reach our seats we’re accosted…

About a boy: Ruben Niborski as Rievan in Menashe

Cinema

My favourite frum film of the year – thus far: Menashe reviewed

Menashe is a drama set amid Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. It is performed entirely in the Yiddish language. It is…

Culture Buff

Xu Zhen Eternity-Buddha in Nirvana

When state governments put money into cultural events they like them to be large and ‘exclusive’. Well, the Victorian Government…

Life

High life

This time last year I was radiating optimism; what a difference a year makes

As the song almost says, what a difference a year makes: 2017 is not over yet, but it’s been a…

Low life

How a human body burns

I took a dab of antiseptic gel and rubbed my hands together. ‘Alone tonight, sir?’ said the charming head waiter.…

Real life

My horse is a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Reggie Kray

While the vet was checking Gracie, I asked him to take a look at Tara, the old chestnut hunter. Just…

The turf

The dark side of horse racing

Spotting Mark Grant’s name on an Ascot racecard, I remembered a dashing young mop-haired rider I first encountered some years…

Bridge

Bridge

The year is drawing to a close and this is my last column before Christmas. May I wish you all…

Chess

Books of the year

The English Chess Federation has awarded its Book of the Year prize to Timman’s Titans: My World Chess Champions by…

Chess puzzle

Puzzle

White to play. This position is from Timman-Short, Tilburg 1990. Can you spot Timman’s classic finish? We regret that this…

Competition

Shipping lines

In Competition No. 3027 you were invited to submit a poem inspired by the Shipping Forecast.   Life-saver, lullaby, poetic…

Crossword

2339: Interesting

Cryptic indications in four clues are incomplete; in each case, the part not indicated is supplied by a 1D (two…

Crossword solution

to 2336: IRRELEVANT

The action that results in 6, 10, 29D and 30 is HAIR-RAISING (7, defined by 5). RAISING A HARE (39)…

Status anxiety

The subtle art of showing off at work

This has been an interesting year for me. Back in January, I took up a full-time job as director of…

Spectator sport

Why Ben Stokes should be picked for Perth

And so to a cloudy, chilly Adelaide, more like London in October than Australia in the early days of high…

Dear Mary

Mary solves your problems: What do you say when a screaming child is ruining your lunch?

Q. My wife and I were having lunch in our local bistro. A boy of about two was wandering around…

Food

Henrietta: a casual restaurant with formal food for people wearing hats

Henrietta is a restaurant in a boutique hotel on Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, around the corner from the actors’ church…

Mind your language

Syndromes: they have made their escape from the medical world

‘You must have Tired Old Woman Syndrome,’ said my husband as I fell back into an armchair with a sigh…