The mutterings of the dead
Ten years ago Shehan Karunatilaka’s first novel, Chinaman, was published and I raved about it, as did many others. Set…
Letters
Why we allowed it Sir: In her article ‘Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?’ (3 September), Lionel Shriver partially answers…
Diary
Liz Truss doesn’t waste energy on unnecessary emotion. At the announcement of her victory at the QE2 Centre, she ditched…
A bold departure
Ian McEwan’s latest novel is unusually long and autobiographical. It’s surprising in other ways, too, says Claire Lowdon
The indispensable impresario
‘What exactly is it you do?’ asked a bamboozled King Alfonso XIII of Spain upon meeting Sergei Diaghilev at a…
A sadder and a wiser man
‘Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.’ A.N. Wilson seems, on the surface, to have taken to heart…
Bridge
When was the last time you made a doubled slam – a slam that could and should have been defeated…
A shameful betrayal
Philippe Sands’s compelling new book opens in 2018 at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Liseby Elysé…
The curse of Medusa
Natalie Haynes has been compared with Mary Renault, the historical novelist who scandalised readers in the 1950s with her unflinching…
Musicals with a message
Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? Picasso or Matisse? Lennon or McCartney? Impossible to call? No such quandary with Rodgers and Hart and…
High life
Gstaad There’s a fin de saison feeling around here, but the restaurants are still full and the sons of the…
Chess speaks for itself
‘Plug the fucking laptop in!’ Hans Niemann, the lively 19-year-old from the US, was left fuming – understandably – after…
Low life
In Frederic Manning’s classic Great War novel, The Middle Parts of Fortune, the shattered battalion shambles out of the line…
Into thin air
John Keay has for many years been a key historian and prolific contributor to the romance attaching to the highest…
Puzzle no. 719
White to play. Cornette-Feller, French Champion-ship, August 2022. Black has just played 13…h7-h6. How did White capitalise on this mistake?…
Gimme gimme gimme
In Competition No. 3265, you were invited to submit a letter to a friend asking for a loan as it…
2572: Blown up
Around the perimeter, beginning at square 1, is a line of poetry (seven words, in ODQ) followed by the title…
Solution to 2569: Anadad
The quotation was ‘I WAS BORN TO SPEAK ALL MIRTH AND NO MATTER’ from Much Ado About Nothing (II.i.321) by…
The Spectator’s Notes
As is now well known, Liz Truss has travelled politically. Her parents are left-wing, and there is a photograph of her…
Truss’s Downing Street refit
How 10 Downing Street works – or doesn’t – always reflects the character of the prime minister who inhabits it.…
The diversity myth
‘Great offices of state set to contain no white men’ was the way one national newspaper reported the formation of…
Pod wars
The competition between news-led podcasts is nearing boiling point. If you tuned in to The Media Show on Radio 4…
The Archbishop of Canterbury has risen to the occasion
Archbishop Justin Welby has done a good job of relating the Queen’s virtues to her Christian faith. This is no…
King Charles’s first address as monarch in full
I speak to you today with feelings of profound sorrow. Throughout her life, Her Majesty the Queen – my beloved mother…
