Trouble ahead if we run out of pigs in blankets
This is getting serious. Never mind global shortages of microchips, plastics, copper and container ships; now we’re running out of…
The doors of St Aidan’s were locked
The end of summer 2021, the end of the great British staycation. I sat on the grass outside the post…
Leotards
Jules Léotard was blessed in his name. It might have been quite different had he been called, say, Jules Droupé.…
‘Britain is not a superpower’
The Defence Secretary on Afghanistan and the questions facing the West
Gove has got his groove back
I was pleased to see pictures of Michael Gove at a nightclub in Aberdeen last weekend. According to press reports,…
Weaving stories
What are myths for? Do they lend meaning and value to this quintessence of dust? Like religion, perhaps they help…
A woman in the shadows
When Catherine Dior, one of the heroic French Resistance workers captured by the Nazis, came face to face with her…
Busted flush
Forgive the personal question, but how long does it take you to, you know, go to the gents, ladies, non-binary?…
The Tories aren’t in party mood
Nearly two years on from the general election and 11 years since the Tories took office, they remain comfortably and…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. We have had some rather rich Argentines to stay. No one was able to come in to help before…
Fit for a king
A French creole restaurant rises in the sullen ruins of London. It is called Louie, for French king or trumpeter,…
London notebook
In London for the first time in 18 months, I was as excited as a child on a birthday outing.…
The Spectator’s Notes
From time to time, people get worried and ask one another: ‘Is the world falling apart?’ I imagine this is…
A farewell to arms
It was quite the handover at Kabul airport this week. The last American troops to exit Afghanistan reportedly left facing…
Problematic
‘This crossword is problematic!’ exclaimed my husband, tossing aside the folded newspaper marked with a ring where his whisky glass…
A thankless task
The final volume of Peter Ackroyd’s History of England feels like a dutiful exercise carried out in a hurry, says Philip Hensher
The Nobel truth
I suspect that there are no people in the world quite so right-on as the Nobel prize committee members. A…
His true calling
We tend to think of turning points as single moments of change — Saul on the road to Damascus or…
Boys who never grew up
I can’t recall reading an angrier book than this. Richard Beard has written what I hope for his sake is…
Darkness and desolation
In Geoffrey Household’s adrenalin-quickening 1939 thriller Rogue Male, a lone English adventurer takes a potshot at Hitler and then runs…
No stone left unturned
In May 2019, the first World of Bob Dylan conference was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Why Tulsa? Because Dylan’s archives…
It all streams past
To write about London and its rivers is to enter a crowded literary field. Many aspects of watery life in…
Best-laid plans
A popular conceit among chess authors, particularly dead ones, is to describe a fine game as the execution of a…
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
The vast majority of the British public, and even military historians, have never heard of them. COPPists — a combination…
