Puzzle No. 664
White to play. Greco–NN, 1620. The centre is a dangerous place for the king. Which move does White play to…
Take seven
In Competition No. 3209, you were invited to provide Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of a Tory MP. Inspiration for this challenge…
Solution to 2514: Welcome Back
Unclued lights were stories in The Return of Sherlock Holmes. (The Adventures of the: EMPTY (41) HOUSE (2), DANCING MEN…
High-minded vs heartbreaking
It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…
Everywhere is Somewhere
I’m off. In the week when you may read this, my partner and I will be winging our way to…
An unhealthy app-etite
As I begin, I’m tortured by the doo-do-doo-do of The Twilight Zone’s theme music. I’ve hurtled back in time. Suddenly…
Is it too cruel to throw Lynch into the jaws of US justice?
Be glad you’re not in Dr Mike Lynch’s shoes. A London judge has ruled that the founder of the Cambridge-based…
Apocalypse now
Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death
Growing pains
The biggest challenge in reviewing M. Night Shyamalan’s Old lies in describing its central idea without making the film sound…
The Spectator’s Notes
On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia,…
Just the ticket
Last week I attended a dance performance in person for the first time since March last year. If you’d asked…
Boris’s last shot
Last week there was acute concern in government about the country’s re-opening. Would restrictions need to be reimposed when schools…
Springtime for Putin
Alexander Litvinenko lies in a London hospital, dying of polonium poisoning. That photograph from 2006 haunts the memory: the medical…
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Listening to Trees A Crowd, a podcast exploring the ‘56(ish) native trees of the British Isles’, solved one of childhood’s…
Finding Karyo
There was, you may remember, a time when Sunday night television was rather a jolly affair: gently plotted and full…
Tried and tested
Rather miraculously, my daughter managed to leave the country last week to go on holiday with a group of friends.…
Wildness and wit
Heads turn, strangers gawp, matrons tut or look in envy. A man doffs his bowler hat knowing when he is…
Diary
The past week has seen another media splash about the self-exiled Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Following the recent ruckus…
Letter from South Africa
Sixty-eight years ago, when I was four, my Scottish father and English mother took me from London to South Africa,…
Portrait of the week
Home The daily number of coronavirus cases detected by tests fell from 54,674 on 17 July to 23,511 by 27…
Mug’s Games
Winners at the Olympics were thought to have come as close to a god as any man could. But that…
