Dear Mary: how can I get my snobby mother to accept a live-in carer?
Q. I have a meeting scheduled with a possible business associate who asked me to buy a certain book on…
Arsenal’s boy wonder is the future of English football
It certainly never happened to me when I was a lad – even after a particularly insightful essay on the…
The perils of London: a beginner’s guide
An interesting new perspective on London is doing the rounds. Our capital city is being advertised as a paradise. London,…
Louis Theroux needs to make a positive case for masculinity
I’ve always had a soft spot for Louis Theroux. I wouldn’t call him a friend, exactly, but I’ve known him…
Which age group is most at risk of meningitis?
Churchill insurance There was outrage that Winston Churchill is to be dumped from the £5 note in favour of wildlife.…
The latest Guardian attack on Nigel Farage is desperate stuff
Some years ago I was approached by someone from a platform called ‘Cameo’. Not all Spectator readers will have heard…
The hidden truth about our failing universities
Is it worth going to university? Since 1999, when Tony Blair declared higher education the answer to all society’s problems,…
Letters: Litter is a sign of Britain’s low self-esteem
State of the nations Sir: My spirits were raised by your stirring defence of the forthcoming royal visit to America…
Inside blockaded Cuba, life is getting odder by the day
It’s nearly two months since Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing a total oil blockade on Cuba, and life…
Can the special relationship survive Trump?
Since this calamitous Iran war began, there’s been endless talk in Britain about our ‘special relationship’ (often capitalised) with the…
Has Rachel Reeves secured a rare victory for growth?
There’s very little to celebrate in Downing Street these days but it must have been vodka shots all round in…
The dying art of the kimono
‘The road was frozen… Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi [broad sash].…
Lazy: America is Beautiful, Chapter 1 reviewed
Neil LaBute is one of America’s most provocative and interesting playwrights. His best-known work, The Shape of Things, was made…
Charming: The Other Bennet Sister reviewed
The Other Bennet Sister is to Pride and Prejudice what Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet.…
Why the Goldberg Variations fill me with dread
Is Sir Andras Schiff becoming the Ken Dodd of the piano? In his later years, you’ll recall, the Yorick of…
Toni Servillo’s face cannot bore: La Grazia reviewed
Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia is about an ageing Italian president who is coming to the end of his seven-year term,…
The alluring mess of CMAT
The last time I saw CMAT – Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson – was in the middle of a grey afternoon at…
Today’s ballerinas are too perfect
‘Ballet is woman,’ Balanchine once gnomically pronounced. A remark not to be taken too literally, but essentially true. Like every…
A Ramses show that has little to do with Ramses
Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold is, let’s not shy away from it, a profit-seeking exhibition mounted by an entertainment business.…
Meet the world’s finest string quartet
Once upon a time in communist Hungary – 1975, in fact – four students at the Liszt Academy decided to…
