The Spectator
9 November 2019 Aus
Australia
Spies like Abbott
It is hard to know which proposition is more absurd. Is it the notion that former prime minister Tony Abbott…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
I had just settled down in Air Canada’s luxury airliner that would whisk me across the Pacific to Vancouver and…
Australian Features
Lefties’ shaggy dog story
At this distance, it’s hard to credit the derangement of the US leftist media over Donald Trump. The president had…
Since records began
If we are being asked to shut down our coal export industry and the 48 coal turbines that supply 75…
Brother, can you spare a solar panel?
In the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being Green and no-one knows that better than Mike…
My finest hour
Every journalist dreams of the scoop that will make his name. Ten years ago this month I finally got mine…
Letter from Japan
With ubiquitous Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples proclaiming the nationwide universality of religious belief, Japan is the ideal location for…
A bill of rights? Kel horreur!
Kel Richards’ proposal in these pages for a bill of rights (‘Conservative Notes’, 2 November 2019) as a solution to…
Out like Flynn
James Flynn is not an obvious enigma, even if he does hold the distinction of possibly being the only scholar…
Treachery of the elites
The greatest struggle in the West, and especially amongst the English-speaking nations, is an internal one. This is not to…
Features
The mesmerising mediocrity of Trump’s opponents
If you believe the headlines, President Donald Trump is in deep trouble. The great impeachment saga is gathering pace. House…
Hero or double agent? An encounter with Lech Walesa
Lech Walesa is probably the most famous of all the thousands — actually millions — who struggled against the oppression…
‘Utterly betrayed’: Britain’s Jews are now politically homeless
We Jews have evolved to be neurotic; so neurotic that, in certain circumstances, the Syrian border feels slightly safer than…
Franco’s exhumation could help decide the Spanish election
I was no sooner in Madrid than General Franco was exhumed from his mausoleum not far from El Escorial. An…
George Eliot was much more radical than we give her credit for
It’s easy to forget, as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of her birth, how radical George Eliot actually was. The…
The war heroes of Northolt Airport
At 6.50 p.m. on 31 August 1997 a plane touched down at Northolt Airport. It was a lamentable and dismal…
The Week
The case for amnesty: why it’s time to offer citizenship to illegal immigrants
There is an unspoken truth about British life: we have two classes of citizen. The first are those born or…
Portrait of the week: Bercow steps down, Hoyle steps up and an election begins
Home Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Labour MP for Chorley and deputy Speaker since 2010, was elected Speaker by the Commons.…
If parliament were more modern, might it become less aggressive?
I’m writing this in Crete where a late summer has seen brilliant sunshine and temperatures reaching 25°C — but can…
Do ‘Workington Man’ and ‘Worcester Woman’ decide elections?
National characters How useful is it to characterise an election with a single anthropological specimen such as ‘Workington Man’? ‘Worcester…
Letters: How to squash a Speaker
No special protection Sir: Rod Liddle’s joke that the election might be held on a date when Muslims cannot vote,…
Columnists
Labour thinks that its trump card is Trump
On Wednesday morning, I was hoisted into the air of Whitehall on a cherry-picker. A century ago the proto-Cenotaph appeared…
Boris’s fate will be decided by Lib Dem voters
The Tories’ great fear in this campaign is that they can get their vote out, squeeze the Brexit party right…
Beware the wokeplace romance
I wonder if we are beginning to see the end of assortative mating. For a long while now we have…
I’ll vote Lib Dem – but I can’t join them
I don’t believe that before last week I’ve ever quit any organisation on an issue of principle. I tend to…
Dear Nigel: Don’t become the man who reversed the referendum result
Dear Nigel Believe it or not, I’ve been your defender. I’ve often told Americans, ‘Sure, he comes across as a…
Drill down and it’s obvious: the fracking debate was lost long ago
Five years ago this week, George Osborne as chancellor announced a scheme to place tax revenues from shale gas fracking…
Books
Letters: How to squash a Speaker
No special protection Sir: Rod Liddle’s joke that the election might be held on a date when Muslims cannot vote,…
Books of the year – part one
Philip Hensher The best novels of the year were Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (Fleet, £16.99) and James Meek’s To…
Vladimir Nabokov confesses to butterflies in the stomach
Not every novelist has opinions. Some of the greatest have a touch of the idiot savant, such as Adalbert Stifter,…
It’s a dull world in which children don’t challenge their parents
On the Shoulders of Giants consists of 12 essays that the late Umberto Eco gave as lectures at the annual…
Picturing paradise: the healing power of art
Some 35 years ago I visited the National Gallery of Sicily in Palermo on the hunt for the ‘Virgin Annunciate’…
Rescuing the great British Cheddar
Gastronomy is one of the deepest forms of culture. If you’ve grown up in France you know this, to the…
How to message a Martian
Apparently the first audio message broadcast into space with the ostensible purpose of communicating with aliens was the sound of…
A tribute to the grandes dames of gardening — Beth Chatto and Penelope Hobhouse
There is no longer much point buying strictly practical gardening books, such as were a staple of the publishing industry…
There’s no end to the wonders of the human body, says Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson has come a long way from being the funniest, most irreverent travel writer around. He’s still as amiable,…
Dieting to death: a black comedy of boarding school life
It sounds in bad taste, but Scarlett Thomas has written a riotously enjoyable novel about a boarding school full of…
When atheists stole the moral high ground
In 1585, Jacques du Perron presented to the court of the French king Henry III, as a kind of after-dinner…
Liberty depends on a delicate balance between state and society
Liberty is a fragile thing. For thousands of years, civilisations have risen, flourished and fallen, and most of them have…
Arts
Mick Hucknall on women, rejection and cultural appropriation
What makes someone become a pop star? Sometimes, it’s true, pop stardom arrives by accident, and its recipient responds not…
John Flaxman is the missing link between superhero movies and Homer
As you enter the forecourt of the Royal Academy, you see them. A row of artistic titans, carved in stone,…
How a City lawyer conquered the hardest piano work ever written
Charles-Valentin Alkan played the piano faster than Liszt and louder than Chopin. The dying Pole left instructions that only Alkan…
God awful: BBC1’s His Dark materials reviewed
‘Here’s your new Sunday night obsession…’ the BBC announcer purred, overintoned and mini-orgasmed, like she was doing an audition for…
Why I love a bit of death on a Sunday night
There’s nothing like a nice bit of death on a Sunday evening. Radio 4 originally transmit their obituary programme Last…
Scorsese at his most leisurely, meandering and engrossing: The Irishman reviewed
The Irishman is Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour epic — a mobster-a-thon, you could say — starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino,…
The open-hearted loveliness of Hot Chip
Squeeze and Hot Chip are both great British pop groups. But they never defined a scene. Their ambitions extended further…
Why the Royal Court is theatre’s answer to Islamic State
The Royal Court is the theatre’s answer to Islamic State, a conspiracy of nihilists fascinated with death, supported by groups…
Woke slogans welded to incompetent grunge: Neil Young’s Colorado reviewed
Grade: B- Horribly woke boilerplate slogans welded inexpertly to the usual incompetent Crazy Horse grunge. Young and his pick-up band…
Jacqueline Dark, Taryb Fiebig and Helen Sherman
Vivaldi is having further boosts to his popularity with the Brandenburg Orchestra delivering cracking performances of his Four Seasons in…
Life
My present abode is one of the great deco houses left intact in the Bagel
New York What follows will bore the pants off you, but at least it beats another piece on Brexit.…
My image of the young Jeremy Corbyn is not a flattering one
I found the stone and the key underneath and let myself into the cottage — brr! I immediately made a…
Who will take the threat to horses from fireworks seriously?
Remember remember the 5th of November, when Britain’s most controversial pub chain stages a massive firework display in the middle…
The best thing about autumn is the return of jumping
Never mind Keats’s mists and mellow fruitfulness, or even that glorious autumnal odour of wet dog — a regular accompaniment…
Bronze in Batumi
The hammering downpour before the last round in Batumi was, in retrospect, a precious omen. After all, England’s medal drought…
no. 579
Black to play. Erwin l’Ami–Luke McShane, Batumi, 2019. The pawn on e6 looks powerful, but White’s king is more vulnerable…
Station to station
In Competition No. 3123 you were invited to submit a poem that begins ‘By Waterloo Station I sat down and…
2433: House and garden
Across unclued lights (one of two words) combine with down ones to suggest the surnames of four famous English painters;…
to 2430: Petite traveller
On 19 October John le Carré turned eighty-eight (hinted at by TWO FAT LADIES (19/26/20)). His real forenames are DAVID…
40 years on, Life of Brian has made the world a darker place
I went to the Battle of Ideas at the Barbican last weekend, a free speech festival organised by the Brexit…
How veganism became mainstream
I have just returned from Canada, which seems to share Britain’s new-found obsession with veganism. There, chains such as Burger…
Dear Mary: how can I stop my dad treating my mum like a slave?
Q. Dad takes an old-fashioned approach to marriage: I have never seen him clear his plate and he does not…
The delights of Spanish wine – and art
First, an apology. In my last column, I appeared to be saying that good champagne does not age. This must…
What’s the different between ‘while’ and ‘whilst’?
‘Why is whilst only ever used in letters?’ asked my husband, casting aside an argumentative letter from his sister written…
