‘Whitehall was horrified by Brexit’
Australia’s departing high commissioner on what really happened in the trade talks
A democracy ruled by dynasts
The Philippines is the odd man out in Asia, a predominantly Catholic country colonised first by Spain, then the United…
Low life
So that’s it. Is a third world war possible? It’s already begun, opined a retired US general in the newspaper.…
Let us eat cake
Amid the bronze cladding of Soho, with its pop-up, suck-down restaurants – the Cadbury’s Creme Egg Café was a nadir…
A prickly customer
In October 1897, the grandees of the Royal Horticultural Society gathered to bestow their highest award, the Victoria Medal of…
The right not to bear arms
As I’ve occasionally come to think is the case with The Spectator, this book is perhaps best begun at the…
A visit from Neanderthals
This is the kind of novel that will be discussed jubilantly in the book clubs of places like Lib Dem…
A true bohemian
Jean Rhys lived a vagabond life – but she wrote about gloom and squalor with luminous purity and a poet’s care, says Lucasta Miller
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. We went for lunch over the bank holiday with the parents of one of my son’s schoolfriends. We had…
Bridge
My teammate Thor Erik Hoftaniska is having a bit of a moment. He won last year’s (online) Gold Cup (on…
A police farce
I welcome Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent announcement that he intends to reignite David Cameron’s ‘bonfire of the quangos’ in his capacity…
The man in the white suit
Mark Twain conquered almost every challenge that came his way except old age. Living well into his seventies, he was…
Power naps
Whatever one thinks of her politics, Angela Rayner is clearly a pretty sporting party, and the joke she made about…
High life
New York Back in the good old days the Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was the hotel for…
Activists masquerading as educators
The recent news from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) that fewer and fewer students are choosing to study higher…
Trump might be the left’s only hope
Conversations about 2024 usually center on whether former President Donald J. Trump is going to run again. But regardless of…
Now, everyone’s a biologist!
And just like that, bodily autonomy and women were back! With news leaking that the US Supreme Court was set…
For whom doth Ukraine’s bell toll?
Few people are better qualified than General Philip Breedlove (US) and General Sir Richard Shirreff (UK) to assess the military…
Where are those ‘money trees’ when you need them?
If only money could grow on trees. Victoria could plant a vast forest stretching to the horizon, visible from the…
Saving Private Josh
Josh Frydenberg has always been openly ambitious. Ambitious to be Member for Kooyong. Ambitious to be a minister. And ambitious…
The fight is on to censor Elon Musk’s Twitter
If Elon Musk truly intends to make Twitter a free-speech platform, he’s clearly got a fight on his hands. That…
We must stand up for private rights
By disposition, conservatives distrust government. They are for “limited government” and worry about the coercive power of the state intruding…
Are we heading towards a recession?
The US Federal Reserve yesterday announced its biggest interest rate rise in 22 years. Today, the Bank of England follows…
