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…
‘A second-class racism’
The comic David Baddiel has written a book which explains that much of the far left hates Jews. There are…
Sins of the father
I’d forgotten what a rich and deep and characterful voice John le Carré had. Listening to author and lawyer Philippe…
Black mischief
In the cloud-capped highlands of Rwanda, even the rain-makers sound like crashing snobs. When two teenage pupils from Our Lady…
Not down with the kids
Some pictures are now so mediated that their actual physicality has long been dwarfed by a million reproductions. The ‘Mona…
Letters
A leap of faith Sir: I live not far from the ‘London Temple’ of the Church of Jesus Christ of…
A changed woman
Everyone knows Helen of Troy. The feckless sex popsicle betrayed her husband, Menelaus, and ran off with the dashing Paris,…
The Mozarts of ad music
Richard Bratby meets the hidden men and women composing melodies to make you buy
Why fear a society that’s tearing itself apart?
In my teens, rubbishing the implacable edifice of the United States felt like kicking a tank in trainers. Richard Nixon’s…
Mainlining sunshine
One thing about a streamed festival is that the toilets are better than at the real thing. The other thing,…
The first industrial war
This book does not mess about. It tells the story of the fighting on the Western Front between 1914 and…
Models of obedience
Protests are being staged against the proposed bill to change the laws on protest. But there is a bigger issue…
Life after deaf
The multi-Oscar-nominated Sound of Metalstars Riz Ahmed as a heavy-metal drummer whose life is in freefall after losing his hearing.…
On the cards
‘The government would love to put issues such as these beyond the bounds of debate by creating an air of…
Portrait of the week
Home The government sketched a scheme for a coronavirus passport, or ‘Covid status certification’, to be tried out at the…
Rhymes royal
In Competition No. 3193 you were invited to submit clerihews (two couplets, AABB, metrically clunky, humorous in tone) on members…
2501: Delightful
7 Down has wordplay to only half its grid entry. The undefined part is the first word of a 9-word…
to 2498: Cross country
The unclued lights consist of the names of two countries overlapping by two or three letters: eg 25D ‘JAPANAMA’ gives…
Bridge
Bridge is a complex game, and is played by humans. Put those two things together and you have a guarantee…
