The meeting of minds
I learned a great deal at university, about half of it from a man called Raymond Foulk. Ray was not…
Musician’s notebook
My mother died earlier this year aged 85. She left me her old pianola. These were popular in the 1920s…
Wild life
Laikipia Plateau, Kenya Our local chief Panta wore a government-issue khaki uniform with epaulettes, beret and swagger stick. On a…
Novelist’s notebook
In Hatchards for the launch of Andrea Rose’s catalogue raisonné of Leon Kossoff’s oil paintings. It’s bad for the morale…
Another year of brickbats and bouquets
Sport and politics have always been intertwined, but this was the year they became joined at the hip. Yorkshire racism;…
The Spectator’s Notes
The interregnum between incumbents is a well-known and often elongated process in the Church of England. I have recently witnessed…
Dectet
Ten pairs of unclued lights give the names of people whose 89 was ‘50D/2A’ (six words in total). They include…
Diary
I have not given up on my Build Back Boris campaign, which is the most pressing concern facing the UK.…
Meeting the mob
My abiding memory of this fairly appalling year is of the face of the young student at Durham University who…
Twelve questions for Christmas
1. ‘I like the game, the money, and the fame.’ Which Twitter-loving top grandmaster said that, in response to an…
Johnson vs Johnson
It is two years since Boris Johnson achieved one of the most remarkable election victories in modern history. The large…
Revenge is rarely sweet
‘Who,’ asks Stephen Bayley, in one of the ‘S.B’ chapters of this irresistibly spiky co-written book, ‘could countenance working for…
Royal Notebook
A few weeks ago, a newspaper carried a rather mundane story about some personnel changes at my charity, Sarah’s Trust,…
Face value
Rising professors do well to be controversial if they wish to be invited to contribute to mainstream media. But the…
Ships of heaven
In his new book on Europe’s cathedrals, Simon Jenkins begins with the claim that the greatest among them are our…
Letter from America
If the revolution won’t be televised, the counter-revolution will at least be on PowerPoint. A series of 36 corporate-style PowerPoint…
The message in Klingon
The Rosetta Stone has an awful lot in common with a Kinder Surprise Egg. Hear me out. The actual text…
Portrait of the year
January The United Kingdom found itself in possession of a trade agreement with the EU. Coronavirus restrictions were tightened. The…
Omicron is now Britain’s dominant Covid strain
If you test positive for Covid now in Britain, the odds are that it’s Omicron: it’s now the dominant strain…
Who’s a vigilante anyway?
The idea that what happened at the Capitol of January 6 was an “insurrection” was always a ridiculous and malevolent…
The Bible retold
Robert Alter is both exasperated and beguiled by Roberto Calasso’s intellectual potpourri