The Spectator
19 April 2025 Aus
C’mon, Dutt Dutt!

Australia
C’mon, Dutt Dutt!
The Coalition can still win. That is the lesson of recent elections in Australia (where the polls have frequently been…
Australian Features
Poilievre still in the game to win
Trump-deranged commentators don’t understand the Canadian system
ABC of Aboriginal history
Why isn’t the Yoorrook Commission interested in ‘The Whole Truth’?
A referendum on Albo’s government
Labor’s true believers have become Menzies’ forgotten people
Crying out for new leadership
Australia needs Dutton - and NSW needs a fresh new senator
Features
How I found Christianity
I wasn’t brought up in the faith. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist lay-preacher, but when my mother left County…
Admit it: Creme Eggs are vile
Every Easter, the Creme Egg dominates supermarket shelves. It is, Cadbury’s marketing department loves to remind us, ‘the nation’s favourite…
Lamb is for life, not just for Easter
Roast lamb is as expected on the Easter table as turkey is at Christmas. But as a nation, we are…
‘We’re going to a more radical place’: Wes Streeting on his plans for the NHS
A copy of a leading article from The Spectator is stuck to the wall of Wes Streeting’s office in the…
The assisted suicide bill should not survive
Until about six months ago, it would have been hard to find a more inoffensive politician than the Labour backbencher…
Would Trump really bomb Iran?
A satellite picture shows six American B-2 Stealth bombers parked on the runway at Diego Garcia. The planes – each…
Where have all the rabbits gone?
It’s spring and in this corner of rural Sussex, the bluetits are at the window, newborn lambs are bleating in…
‘Jordan Peterson is a sad and angry man’: an interview with Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has a new book out, a slim, thoughtful introduction to Christianity. But that’s not…
The world reveres British music
I have just returned from the lovely Italian city of Rimini, where 300 local singers had gathered for a weekend…
The Week
Spare us from performative piety
Lent did not, I confess, start well. Cheltenham fell in its first week, and the Gold Cup is hardly the…
Portrait of the week: British Steel seized, army sent to Birmingham and slim told to stay home in Beijing
Home Parliament was recalled from its Easter recess to sit on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands…
How Roman emperors handled hair loss
Donald Trump’s obsessive ‘awhairness’ makes one wonder: why is it so important to him? The topic was of some interest…
The Easter story reminds us of the importance of truth
Live not by lies, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned the West half a century ago, but we have hardly heeded him since.…
Letters: Donald Trump’s messiah complex
He’s not the messiah Sir: To Freddy Gray’s meticulous dissection of Trumpian chaos theory (‘Shock tactics’, 12 April) I would…
Columnists
No one wants American cars
The weekend’s Scunthorpe drama was a distraction from endless chatter about Donald Trump and his tariffs. Perhaps Downing Street’s spinners…
Sack the judges
The population of the United Kingdom was increased this week by the arrival of two Albanian lesbians who have been…
Reform vs Labour: who’ll win the battle for the north?
When MPs and peers were recalled to parliament for an emergency debate on renationalising British Steel, one man was the…
Why were the Abedis here in the first place?
In recent days parliament has been recalled on a Saturday to debate the renationalisation of the British steel industry. Then,…
The biggest threat to Trump is Trump
Although Republicans and Democrats have few things in common, there’s one American universal: we don’t like when you mess with…
Books
Is there ever a good time to discuss the care of the elderly?
The young are too busy enjoying themselves, the middle-aged are loath to initiate it and the elderly themselves can’t always take part, but it’s a subject sorely in need of public discourse
Only Hitler could have brought the disparate Allies together
Their collaboration was riven by secret deals and betrayals, with Roosevelt suspicious of Churchill and Stalin suspicious of everyone, but all purporting to be great friends
Dangerous games of cat and mouse: a choice of crime fiction
A sadistic octogenarian meets her match in a malevolent eight-year-old at a Luxor hotel. Thrillers by Christopher Bollen, Henry Wise, Charlotte Philby and Cristina Rivera Garza reviewed
The boy who would be king: The Pretender, by Jo Harkin, reviewed
A magnificent imagining of the life of Lambert Simnel traces his progress from farm boy to coronation in Dublin to turnspit in the Tudor palace kitchens to plans of dark revenge
The mystical masterpiece from Stalag VIII-A
A meditation on Quartet for the End of Time, Oliver Messiaen’s great prison camp composition, should bring the strange, bird-fixated religious avant-gardist new admirers
Why we never tire of tales of pointless polar hardship
Out in the middle of nowhere, our heroes and anti-heroes are stripped down to essentials and the quest for knowledge becomes a quest for self-knowledge and human improvement
The making of Van Gogh as an artist came at a terrible cost
In the manic years 1886-88 when he lived with his brother in Paris, Vincent worked at fever-pitch, exhausting himself and Theo and driving them both towards insanity
Christianity in England is dying – and our national identity with it
The self, not society, has begun to matter most to people, with the collective life threatened by ragged bands of individualists lacking a sense of history and burdened by the mere present
The pain of being a Bangle – despite sunshine through the rain
The more successful the female rock band became, the unhappier they seemed, with in-fighting and ‘suicidal thoughts’ leading to break up shortly after their greatest hit
Magnetic and manipulative – the enigma of Gala Dali
Countless people apparently found her fascinating, but apart from being shrewd, scary, intelligent and very beady about money, it’s hard to see why
Arts
The way the imagination works
Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…
Devastating: WNO’s Peter Grimes reviewed
Britten’s Peter Grimes turns 80 this June, and it’s still hard to credit it. The whole phenomenon, that is –…
Exhilarating – but also exhausting: ENB’s The Forsythe Programme reviewed
The first time I saw the work of Trajal Harrell I stomped out in a huff muttering about the waste…
Good lawyers make for bad TV
Given that TV cameras aren’t allowed to film British criminal trials, Channel 4’s new documentary series Barristers: Fighting for Justice…
Was Sir John Soane one of the first modernists?
Sir John Soane’s story is a good one. Born in 1753 to a bricklayer, at 15 he was apprenticed to…
Divorce are the best young British band I’ve seen in an age
Can we talk business for a moment? When reviewers like me go to big arenas, we get the best seats…
Cartier used to be a Timpson’s for the rich
In the fall of, I suppose, 1962, my friend Jimmy Davison and I, window shopping on Fifth Avenue, bumped into…
Those behind this fabulous new comedy are destined for big things
Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco is a period piece from 1959. It opens with the invasion of a French village by…
An astonishingly good new album from Black Country, New Road
Grade: A Is that a kind of nod to Oasis in the album title? I can’t think of a band…
Why is the British Museum hiding its great Orthodox icons?
The long neglected art of Byzantium and early Christianity is returning to the world’s museums. Last November, the Louvre confirmed…
Life
Aussie life
The evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad once described woke as a mind virus. For the past decade, Western intellectual and cultural…
Language
At the end of this year (as every year) the dictionaries of the world will announce their choice for ‘word…
The Chinese tried to get me drunk
China: what next? Around the time of the millennium, I wrote that during this century, many of the world’s great…
Can Trump keep me on side?
I’m in danger of falling out of love with Donald Trump. I was ecstatic when he beat Kamala Harris, delighted…
Dear Mary: Is it acceptable to go to bed before my guests do?
Q. I am a self-employed travel specialist, concentrating on holidays in Asia. Friends (and even friends of friends) plague me…
The unsayable case for cars
Rob Henderson is justly famous for coining the phrase ‘luxury beliefs’. These are opinions which are unshakeably held irrespective of…
Aren’t women wonderful?
The mole specialist was wearing a pink Chanel-looking suit and pink diamanté shoes. By mole specialist, I don’t mean someone…
I’m losing the will to hunt
Laikipia, Kenya When I was eight I used to go fishing in the Indian Ocean beyond Vasco da Gama’s pillar…
The simple elegance of fondant potatoes
In 1999, a relatively unknown American chef wrote an essay in the New Yorker uncovering the secrets of restaurants. ‘Don’t…
Is there sex after 70?
When I turned 70 in September, I had a panic attack. I was certain that my romantic life was over.…