Aussie Language
We are used to words being banned – but now it seems the word police are coming for the word…
The philosopher and the philistine
The Collaboration is set in the 1980s when Andy Warhol teamed up with the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat to create bad…
The trauma of conquest
By any yardstick, the Norman Conquest was a ghastly business. Within two decades, the English aristocracy had been more than…
Avril Lavigne: Love Sux
Grade: B Yay, life just gets better and better. World War Three and now this. More petulant popcorn pre-school punk…
Low life
‘We’re at war!’ said the taxi man as I installed myself for the long drive to Marseille. I put a…
The heart bleeds
‘CERTIFICATE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY,’ the freshly issued death certificate read. In the craziness and shock of grief for…
Mourning glory
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
Russia in check
The Champions League final has been moved from St Petersburg to Paris and the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi cancelled.…
The free world’s new reality
We are about to see brutality in Europe on a scalethat will be almost beyond our comprehension. Russia is turning…
The Spectator’s Notes
Much attention has been paid to how Vladimir Putin has learnt from western weakness over his earlier invasions, including into…
Real life
Trees glorious trees. People can’t get enough of them. They don’t want to take care of trees, they just want…
Has Putin saved Boris?
It was with some relief that I heard that Labour’s Diane Abbott was opposed to the Russian invasion of Croatia,…
What the right gets wrong about Putin
A fracture on the international right may seem small fry given everything that is going on right now. But it…
A little Eden
I’m not one of life’s early risers but an exception had to be made on Wednesday last week. In an…
Rapper’s delight
The most disappointing pop performance I’ve ever seen – and in the course of my 15-odd years as a music…
Idi na khuy
‘This will interest you,’ said my husband, looking up from the smeared screen of his telephone. For once he was…
Suited and rebooted
The latest Batman film, The Batman, may be a reboot, or even a reboot of a rebooted reboot that’s been…
Fighting talk
In Competition No. 3238, you were invited to submit a poem about a literary feud. Wallace Stevens’s 1936 fisticuffs with…
Monopoly rules
Here’s a useful tip. Go to the Royal Mail websiteand you can ask your postman to collect letters or parcels…
