Bridge
One of the pleasures of kibitzing online tournaments is that when an intriguing hand comes up, you can flick back…
The Dom bomb
The more anticipated a parliamentary appearance, the less it tends to live up to its billing. But Dominic Cummings’s testimony…
Real life
‘We’re closed for lunch,’ said the farmer, sitting behind the counter of his farm shop with a scowl on his…
Salt and vinegar crisps
Henry Walker might never have got into the crisp business were it not for the fact that his Leicester butcher’s…
Athletics is running on empty
Whatever became of athletics? It’s fallen nearly as far as show jumping and that is a long way. But the…
How harpsichords became racist
It’s a dangerous thing when you import the worst aspects of another culture. And an even worse thing when you…
Who cares if rail is public or private? Just make the trains run on time
The long-awaited review of the railways by former British Airways executive Keith Williams chugged past the platform of public debate…
to 2505: Endgame
The unclued lights are the final headwords for B, D, E, F, S, T, U, W, as listed in Chambers.…
Low life
Walking up through the Stink Street medieval arch with a bag of shopping, I spotted Michael between the oleander branches…
The Spectator’s Notes
It is poetically fitting that the resignation of the chairman of the National Trust, Tim Parker, was announced on the…
Paling into insignificance
The Roof Garden is a pale, Nordic-style restaurant at the top of the glorious Pantechnicon in Belgravia — formerly a…
Dear Mary
Q. Once restrictions are lifted, our annual walking group has planned a week’s walk with after-walk gatherings in a different…
Fathers and sons
Charles, Prince of Wales, is having a little trouble with his son Harry. Romans knew about difficult offspring. They told…
Great
‘Why didn’t they call it Very British Railways?’ asked my husband. Unwittingly (as in most of his remarks), he had…
Perfume and politics
This is a curious book, by turns profound and whimsical. Karl Schlögel, a professor of Eastern European history at Frankfurt,…
Patrisse Cullors will have the last laugh
Patrisse Cullors co-founded Black Lives Matter on faux victimhood. In her Thursday announcement that she would be resigning from the…
France is paying a heavy price for Macron’s vaccine catastrophe
The United States is growing at such a blistering pace the Federal Reserve may have to raise interest rates. In…
Read: Carrie Symonds’s barking mad letter
It has been a ruff time in No. 10 for poor old Dilyn the dog. Adopted in September 2019, the…
What would Menzies make of the modern Liberal Party?
Labor’s 20 per cent result in last weekend’s Hunter by-election is a warning to both the state and federal party,…
In the bleak midwinter
As autumn fades and the final leaves fall, the bitter winds of winter loom. Cold hearts of powerful people begin…
The questions Matt Hancock still has to answer
Matt Hancock’s approach to Dominic Cummings’s allegations has been to come out fighting. He believes he has spent most of today…
How the national curriculum abolishes Australian citizenship
The draft national curriculum for schools is seeking to teach the next generation of Australians a progressive and utopian view of…
Making up history with the Biden White House
Journalists gleefully declared on Wednesday that the Biden administration was ‘making history’ by sending White House deputy press secretary Karine…
