Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. We have been invited to a small but formal dinner in the presence of someone who has been a…
Labour has a problem – but it’s not Keir Starmer
I see that Green campaigning groups are angry that the Conservative party has received donations from the aviation industry, because…
More depravity, please
The first night of the new season at Covent Garden was cancelled when the solemn news came through. The second…
Letters
The Queen’s kindness Sir: Last week’s Spectator (17 September) was thoughtful, insightful and at times hilarious; just the tonic I…
Truss’s first big test
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are determined to show that Britain’s economy is under new management. They want to indicate…
Make mine a triple
Good, better, best was the satisfying trajectory of Northern Ballet’s terrific programme of three original short works, which moves south…
The bonus cap was boneheaded but is this the moment to scrap it?
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng – keen to sharpen the City’s competitive edge, we’re told – wants to remove the legislative cap,…
A frantic collector of views
‘It seems to me that I have to choose between 2 extremes of affection for nature… English, or Southern… The…
Fine but forgettable
Catherine Called Birdy is written and directed by Lena Dunham and it’s a medieval comedy about a 14-year-old girl resisting…
Bridge
Wroclaw, in Poland, played host to the Open World Championships in August this year. The Open Teams, the first event…
Real life
The cyclist was on the wrong side of the road coming towards me head-on. It was a winding country lane…
Fountain pens
Our new King isn’t the only royal to have lost his rag over a leaky pen, as happened when he…
Wild life
Laikipia Plateau, Kenya Until only a few years ago, the constellations blazed across the sky above the farm at night…
Low life
We were four round the little table in the nunnery kitchen: a 90-year-old German lady and her man; a nun…
High life
Privilege at birth displeases wannabe types, and the subject came up rather a lot last week, especially in the Land…
Force of nature
Few forms of music have colonised the world like metal and hip-hop. Wherever you go you will find these two…
The sound of silence
Look at this line. ‘I’m 80 years old. I find that unforgivable.’ Could an actor get a laugh on ‘unforgivable’?…
The Spectator’s Notes
If this were a Catholic country, up would go the cry for canonisation. When Pope John Paul II died, the…
Barometer
The namesakes Some of history’s other Charles IIIs: – Charles III, King of Naples (1382-86): forced Pope Urban VI into…
Bang goes nothing
Crossfire was a three-part drama in more ways than one. Running every night from Tuesday to Thursday, it brought together…
Leicester and the downside of diversity
As I have said many times in recent years, if you import the world’s people you import the world’s problems.…
