I’ve paid the price for the supplementary voting system
Some 114,201 ballots were rejected in the first round of the London mayoral election, approximately 5 per cent of the…
A nation of chancers
Alex Burghart describes England’s fitful development from a collection of warring kingdoms into a highly centralised state
Hares
The numbers of the dear old mountain hare in England are becoming perilously depleted. A researcher, Carlos Bedson, has suggested…
The Spectator’s Notes
This week, the Church of England issued its document ‘Contested Heritage in Cathedrals and Churches’. It is guidance for what…
The writing’s on the wall
Towards the end of April, my mum sent me a letter. She doesn’t write as a rule — we speak…
Top pay restraint may persist over here – but not in the US
‘Consider a temporary cut in executive salaries’ was the Confederation of British Industry’s advice to members at the start of…
Letter from Israel
Jerusalem Thomas Friedman has a lot to answer for. The New York Times’s oracle has ruined, through overuse in his…
Off-the-peg ire
Over the decades, Van Morrison’s role within the tower of song has shifted from chief visionary officer to head of…
Forewarned, but not forearmed
The most extraordinary thing, still, about Operation Barbarossa is the complete surprise the Wehrmacht achieved. In the early hours of…
Will’s world
Shakespeare’s first biographer was the gossipy antiquarian John Aubrey, who famously described the playwright as ‘not a company keeper’. It…
Letters
China has peaked Sir: Niall Ferguson makes some good points about the nature of Xi Jinping’s imperial aspirations but misses…
In a state of flux
‘Something is afoot,’ wrote the academic philosopher Kathleen Stock in 2018: Beyond the academy, there’s a huge and impassioned discussion…
Revolution and repression
Certain novels complicate the very notion of literary enjoyment. This, by the author of the international bestseller The Yacoubian Building,…
An unholy trinity
Lisa McInerney likes the rule of three. Three novels set in Cork structured around sex, drugs and rock’n’roll and, within…
The neglected, the niche, and the uncool
When this whole mess is over, there’ll be a shortish MA thesis — or at least a blog post —…
The first Cambridge spy
For his 15th novel, the espionage writer Alan Judd turns his hand to the mystery of Christopher Marlowe’s death. The…
Bring me my spear
Manet’s ‘Botte d’asperges’ are probably the most famous asparagus in the world. The artist painted the delicious white- and lilac-tinged…
Shades of Fleabag
A new work by Alan Bennett features in Still Life, a medley of five ‘untold stories’ from Nottingham Playhouse. The…
A moving target
‘They’ll slowly undress us first and then kill us, so our clothes won’t get bloody and our banknotes won’t get…
Utopia or Pleasantville?
Some Kind of Heaven is a documentary set in The Villages, Florida, which is often described as a ‘Disneyland for…
New Yorkers yakking
New York in a nutshell? No way. New York in a New York minute? Forget about it. The city contains…
Why I spoilt my ballot paper
The headline ‘Government to allow people to hug’ one might have expected to hear on early evening news bulletins in…
More Miami vice
Deep in Peru’s Amazon rainforest sits a desolate zone, stretching for miles and pockmarked with chemical-tainted water that glistens orange…
