Party’s over
In normal circumstances, no one would care if staff in No. 10 held a Christmas party. But last year, Boris…
Back to the Dark Ages
She’s done it again: J.K. Rowling has written a captivating children’s book. The Christmas Pig(Little Brown, £20) is about a…
Wrong time and place
Dan Rhodes’s career might be regarded as an object lesson in How Not to Get Ahead in Publishing. Our man…
The glory that was Greece
Imagine a new take on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. A love-shy artist makes a woman out of marble who…
An anarchist cri de coeur
Ten years ago, David Graeber was a leading figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He and his fellow protesters…
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Grade: B It must have been an interesting day in the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s press office when Blair Tindall’s memoir…
America’s vice
Is it rude to refer to the Vice President of the USA as the world’s most famous diversity hire? Possibly.…
My plan for young people
I have been reading 39 Ways To Save The Planet by the BBC journalist Tom Heap, which includes such ingenious…
Don’t strand Cambo until our energy future is secure
If the phrase ‘stranded asset’ hasn’t yet entered your vocabulary, here’s a useful example of what it means. The 178…
How to spin a storm
If, in the days after Storm Arwen, the north of England began to suspect that the south didn’t much care…
Editor’s Notebook
‘You can appoint your own chief executive,’ boomed the PM over a rather sad bottle of wine. He was asking…
Small-minded
In Competition No. 3228, you were invited to provide a well-known extract from adult literature rewritten for inclusion in an…
The Spectator’s Notes
One midnight last month, Jon Wiltshire, who lives in a cottage just outside our Sussex village, was woken by a…
Puzzle 11 December 2021
White to play and mate in 2. Composed by W.A. Shinkman, Montreal Spectator, 1880. As things stand, White has no…
The border terriers
One of this government’s favourite tactics is to act as if the beginning of its time in office was the…
Elephants in the room
When you first hear that a remake of West Side Story is on the cards, it’s: God, why? Why would…
Guitarist’s Notebook
I’ve been occupied this year recording and promoting a new album. I was pleased to finally see the release of…
Night on a bare mountain
Novelists are leery about letting the buzzwords of recent history into their books. The immediate past threatens to upstage the…
Bridge
All the best people play bridge. Stephen Sondheim, who died two weeks ago, was mad about the game. In his…
Low life
Noticing via this Low Life column that I had trench fever, the Western Front Association treated me to a year’s…
