Low life
Nothing in the beach hotel was made of plastic. It wasn’t advertised as being a plastic-free hotel, but we noticed…
Real life
‘Do you care about the woodland? Do you care about the wildlife?’ shouted the bearded Woodland Trust volunteer from his…
Odious
Lord Geidt said in his resignationletter that he had been put in an odious position. He meant it was hateful,though…
High life
It’s nice to be back on the old continent again, especially after getting within a couple of hundred yards of…
Solution to 2558: Blonde, 78
Unclued lights were associated with JUBILEE: years (CALENDAR, SCHOOL, FINANCIAL), clips (CROCODILE,PAPER, TIE) and London underground lines (CENTRAL, CIRCLE, NORTHERN).…
2561: PORTS
Six unclued entries comprise systematically ordered non-words thematically linked by a normal entry, itself unclued. Across 1 Awaiting consideration,…
Puzzle no. 708
White to play. Rezasade-Movsesian, Bundesliga 2022. White was an underdog in this game, but found a subtle winning idea. What…
Hard times
In Competition No. 3254, you were invited to tweak a well-known book title to reflect the straitened times we live…
No blame, no shame
If MI5 had a Cold War file on you – paper in those happy days – it didn’t mean they…
Portrait of the week
Home A rail strike on three alternate days, bringing the system to a standstill for a week, was organised by…
The power and the glory
Geography, climate, economics and nationalism are often seen as decisive forces in history. In this dynamic, original and convincing book…
The wild, wide fen
‘To talk about Crabbe is to talk about England,’ E.M. Forster declared in a radio broadcast in May 1941, but…
Cream of the Candidates
The Candidates tournament is underway in Madrid, where eight of the world’s best players vie for the right to challenge…
An interplay of voices
Margo Jefferson’s Constructing a Nervous System compresses memoir and cultural criticism into one slim, explosive volume, and in doing so…
An immorality tale
Has there been a better novel this century than Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation? There might not…
The last governor
After 13 years in parliament, rising star Chris Patten had the bad luck to be one of the few Tory…
The only option
A little over a year ago, The Spectator printed a cover story about the risk of inflation. Britain, we argued,…
Animal magic
With the technologies at our disposal, we can in fact now know what it’s like to be a bat, says Caspar Henderson
Carry on Carrie
One is not usually surprised by opinions volunteered to parliamentary hopefuls by voters on whose doors the candidate has knocked;…
Medical students give conservatives hope for the future
Those of us orientated to a more conservative perspective are failing on a number of levels, not least of which…
The end of Roe is a victory for Conservatism, Inc.
On a day many Americans on both sides of the abortion issue thought would never come, the Supreme Court reversed…
