The Italian approach to cheating
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The unseasonably warm wind blowing in across the fields from the brooding Adriatic caused my wife Carla…
Spectator Competition: Lines of beauty
For Competition 3427 you were invited to write a paean on a place traditionally considered to be ugly. In an…
Is bet365 punishing me for being a peer?
On my way to the QPR game against Hull last Saturday, I was astonished to discover that Ladbrokes had made…
Let the Daily Mail buy the Telegraph
When I first joined The Spectator under the proprietorship of Conrad Black, we operated in sisterhood with the Telegraph titles…
Letters: Britain’s energy policy is unsustainable
Unsustainable energy Sir: Sir Richard Dearlove (‘Net cost’, 22 November) succinctly sums up the views of many of us who…
Indian classical music’s rebellion against modernity
When Gurdain Ryatt, Ojas Adhiya, Milind Kulkarni and Murad Ali Khan take to the stage at Milton Court this Sunday…
Jessica was the only Mitford worth taking seriously
But her unfailing humour does help lighten a solid new biography that focuses on her tireless campaign for social justice
China today is following Victorian Britain’s industrial pattern
The relentless pursuit of profit inevitably involves cruel exploitation – whether it’s children in Manchester’s cotton mills or Uighurs in Xinjiang’s industrial plants
An unconventional orphan: Queen Esther, by John Irving, reviewed
At the heart of this vast, sweeping novel is a solitary, determined heroine, who – Jane Eyre-like – is a moral force unbound by conventionalities
Childhood illnesses and instability left Patti Smith yearning for ‘sacred mysteries’
Bedridden for much of her youth, she found consolation in music, and a way ‘into fairyland’ through a treasured poetry anthology
