A Murder of Crows
Sometimes a crime show on TV turns into something higher and better, a transfigured thing. The Victim, from Scotland, falls…
Opera on the Harbour: La Traviata
These days, you’d need to be as game as Ned Kelly to run an opera company. It’s a chancy enough…
Aussie Life
Australia’s iconic hippie playground is in the news. This time it is not about real estate booms or Hollywood celebrity…
The reef, the whole reef and nothing but the reef
Peter Ridd’s High Court case is as important as Cardinal Pell’s was
Cooking the books
Agatha and Poirot was one of those programmes that had the annoying effect of making you feel distinctly snooty. ITV’s…
The voice of a generation
Bob Dylan didn’t just assimilate the Great American Songbook – he vastly increased its size and variety, says Andrew Motion
Diary
The last patient I treated was 105 years old. She has lived through two world wars, a depression and at…
Language barriers
I haven’t yet read the report published by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. But, looking at the recommendations,…
Cuckoos
St Tiburtius’ Day, on 14 April, is traditionally when you will hear the first cuckoo. Since at least the Middle…
Constitutional rights and wrong
No one can accuse Linda Colley of shying away from big subjects. This one is as big as they come…
Can Boris beat the vaccine passport rebels?
No prime minister wants to be dependent on the opposition to get the government’s business through the House of Commons.…
Dear Mary
Q. I have just been invited to a wedding where the groom will be the only person I know. Much…
What it is to be English
Referring to the precarious future of the Union of England and Scotland, the authors of Englishness: The Political Force Transforming…
Gardening frenzy
If you had asked me a year ago how a pandemic-panicked world of stockpiles, curfews and social isolation would influence…
The scholar and the gypsy
Naomi Ishiguro began writing Common Groundin the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. The title refers to both Goshawk Common in…
The weekend cottage in the woods
John Ruskin believed the most beautiful things are also the most useless, citing lilies and peacocks. Had he known about…
The Spectator’s Notes
On Grand National Day at Aintree this Saturday, the Rose Paterson Trust will be launched. This time last year, Rose…
The parent trap
Gwendoline Riley’s unsentimental fiction hovers on the edge of comedy and bleakness, and has drawn comparisons from Jean Rhys to…
Cat on hot bricks
The name ‘Carré’ immediately evokes the shadowy world of espionage. Ironically, however, few people today have heard of the real…
