to 2494: Back to front
Unclued lights are from the ‘Looking Glass’ poem Jabberwocky. First prize Alison Peck, Mathry, PembrokeshireRunners-up Patricia Gibbs, Barrow upon Soar,…
Heaven scent
In Competition No. 3189 you were invited to submit a poem about a favourite smell. This challenge certainly seemed to…
Barack and the Boss
Barack Obama wants the world to know how much he loves singing. In his new podcast, which takes the form…
Bridge
One benefit of lockdown is that there is much more time for reading. My personal favourite bridge book is Play…
An oddly matched pair
On a shard of paper, some time in the bleak mid-1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald incorporated a favourite line from one…
Letters
Spinning plates Sir: Kate Andrews is right to highlight the looming risk of inflation (‘Rishi’s nightmare’, 6 March), but to…
On the game
For a novel set partly in a Soho brothel, Hot Stew is an oddly bloodless affair. Tawdry characters drift in…
Barometer
Good for the goose The government indicated that it will ban foie gras, out of animal welfare concerns. While it…
Deepest, darkest Peru
As the planet gets more and more ravaged, the mind can begin to glaze over at the cumulative general statistics…
Salmond’s revenge
Ancient Greeks were not slow to express their enthusiasm for taking revenge. Observing the recent proceedings in the Scottish parliament,…
Crying in the wilderness
Even Edward Said would not have claimed to be ‘the 20th century’s most celebrated intellectual’. But neither was he ‘Professor of Terror’, says Justin Marozzi
Thriller instinct
Judas and the Black Messiah is a biopic about Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, but it’s not your regular biopic…
Vogue declares war on ‘niggling’
In the wake of Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview, much American commentary has been focused on the beastly British tabloid…
Boris, Biden and the era of big government
Bill Clinton’s declaration that ‘the era of big government is over’ summed up the late 1990s political zeitgeist. Centre-left political…
The left’s illiberal turn
In the House of Lords this week, Baroness Jenny Jones of the Green party said she thought that a way…
Meghan ’n’ Joe’s empire of the sentiments
If your facts don’t care about my feelings, then my feelings aren’t obliged to care about your facts. The facts…
When will Eddie Izzard get the message?
Eddie Izzard is a serial election loser, but try telling him that. The comedian has tried – and failed –…
The UK economy is suffering worse than most
Last week The Spectator highlighted new data from the OECD that offers a weekly update comparing a country’s current GDP…
The Sarah Everard case has shown how frightened women really are
Muggers don’t carry umbrellas. Murderers don’t carry briefcases. Kidnappers don’t carry Tesco bags. These are the sorts of utterly illogical…
The curious censorship of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland
Fortunes shift quickly in Chinese cyberspace. On March 1, Chloé Zhao, the Beijing-born film director, was the ‘pride of China’,…
