Anne-Marie Duff
Melbourne was just stirring into public cultural life when the hotel quarantine mishap led to that last alarming lockdown that…
Australian Love Stories: Celebrating love in all its guises at the NPG
The National Portrait Gallery seems to be floundering. That may be unfair but the announcement of the next exhibition left…
Kiwi Life
For New Zealanders to be losing our democracy may be due to sheer carelessness, ignorance, or even stupidity, not to…
Kiwi Language
Nancy Pelosi succeeded in banning ‘mother’ from appearing in the paperwork of Congress. Now the ANU’s Gender Institute Handbook wants…
2495: Contrary
Four unclued lights of a kind, one of two words with an apostrophe, include the theme word. The remaining unclued…
Colourisations and scale models
Another week, another online concert; and since orchestral music seems likely to be confined to screens and stereos for a…
The unlikely lads
The Almeida is fighting back against lockdown with a sprawling family drama about two long-lost siblings. Adrian Lester plays Gilbert…
High life
Gstaad The sun has returned, the snow is so-so, and exercise has replaced everything, including romance. What a way to…
On the defensive
Lauren Oyler is viral and vicious. A critic with a reputation for pulling no punches, she is known for delivering…
Terrific little romps
Everything is too long these days, isn’t it? Every series is at least two episodes too long, podcasts go on…
‘I like upsetting people’
Michael Hann talks to the cult rock star Steven Wilson about why it’s harder to write a pop song than prog
Wave power
In Competition No. 3187 you were asked to provide a sea shanty on a topical theme. This challenge was an…
The Spectator’s Notes
There is a ‘pervasive presence of Chinese military-linked conglomerates and universities in the sponsorship of high-technology research centres in many…
Dear Mary
Q. Our friend lives far away, but comes to stay at her country place nearby several times a year. Some…
Suddenly, it’s fast-forward to an electric future for the car industry
Back in November, when Downing Street’s pandemic responses looked daily more incompetent, the announcement of a ban on sales of…
Memories of Stellenbosch
Lockdown provides time to think, and to reminisce. A South African friend, trapped in Amsterdam, phoned the other day. Had…
Espouse
What do people think espouse means? It looks fairly plain, since spouses are to have and to hold, or indeed…
Opportunity knocks
There is a kind of conversation which sounds intelligent, and which makes sense at first hearing, but which deeper thought…
Synthetic diamonds
Diamonds are forever, they say. Likewise, brilliant games of chess have an everlasting sparkle. I will never tire of replaying…
Beware the linguistic Trojan horse
It’s the bane of many an author these days: those newspaper-filler Q&As. One I recently filled out included the question:…
The secret code of the ruling class
I naively hoped that last year’s statement by the Equalities Minister explaining why unconscious bias training was being phased out…
31 inventions that really could transform the 21st century
‘Get Brexit done, then Arpa’ read Dominic Cummings’s WhatsApp profile. Arpa was what’s now the American Defense Advanced Research Projects…
Nothing personal
Pelé is a two-hour documentary about the great Brazilian footballer — the greatest footballer ever, some would say — who…
It doesn’t matter what’s said – just who’s saying it
The Liberal Democrat party’s foreign affairs spokesgoblin, Velma from Scooby-Doo — or ‘Layla Moran’ as she is known to close…
