Aussie Language
In December the various dictionaries will announce their choice for the Word of the Year title. For a while I…
Top of the chocs
Last Sunday on Channel 4, a man called Eric Nicoli proudly remembered ‘the bravest thing I’ve ever done’. In November…
Man of many parts
This is an ingenious and infuriating book about an ingenious and infuriating writer. I first encountered Fernando Pessoa in the…
Unwelcome news
A character in David Hare’s Skylight claims she has at last found contentment by no longer opening newspapers or watching…
Bellicose but comradely
One of the first retrospective accounts of Oliver Cromwell’s early career, Andrew Marvell’s ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from…
The end of the ride
Audi will make no more fuel engines after 2035. So that’s the end of the Age of Combustion, signalled by…
The roots of conflict
The Island of Missing Trees feels like a strange title until you realise how hard Elif Shafak makes trees work…
Stories within stories within stories
Near to the heart of this wild and labyrinthine novel — on page 516 of 808 — a character in…
A character assassination too far
Revisionist biographies of Churchill are nothing new but this one lays the hostility and contempt on with a trowel, says Andrew Roberts
Nordics and Nazis
Social historians of the future may look back at the reading habits of this era and conclude that we were…
The Spectator’s Notes
The tale of A-levels shows how ministers can sometimes find themselves in a position when it is simply too dangerous…
Why vaccine passports are pointless
Despite having mocked app-happy Albion in my last column, I finally downloaded the NHS app. (Lest I seem a raging…
Down the rabbit hole
The literary sensation of the season is apparently a book called The Constant Rabbit, by Jasper Fforde. In brief, a…
Still life
Lloyd Evans finds the newly returned Edinburgh Fringe quieter, more low-key — and all the better for it
Talking to a brick wall at the National Trust
Press officers, breathe easy. This is not another column attacking the National Trust. Actually, I tell a lie. It is.…
Letter from America
There are many in Donald Trump’s inner circle who have tried to read his mind these past four years, together…
Barking up the right tree
The government’s promise to fund a pilot scheme promoting the teaching of Latin in secondary schools is music to the…
Barometer
Woolly thinking There were protests in Whitehall to save Geronimo, an alpaca due to be put down after testing positive…
Dear Mary
Q. A very old friend has rented a holiday house and invited my husband and me to stay. The property…
My marital own goal
The fighting started just as Caroline turned right on to the Uxbridge Road after emerging from QPR’s stadium on Loftus…
To the gentlemen of Verona
There was a marvellous general of yesteryear called George Burns. He had a good war and a splendid peace. He…
A cocktail of errors
I often argue that, in theory at least, well-made cocktails are indisputably better than wines costing 20 times more. My…
