The year of living contagiously
We have reached Covid-19’s first anniversary in the UK — and I really think we should do something fitting to…
On liberalism
Certain parts of academia seem to wish to turn the study of classics away from a historical, language- and evidence-based…
A boost for the Tories
Imagine for a minute what British politics would be like without a Covid vaccine. The cabinet would be deeply, and…
The Scottish play
Scottish politics tends to go through long bouts of single-party dominance. In the 19th century, the Liberals were in charge.…
Hotel rooms
A few Spectator readers may soon find themselves confined to quarantine hotels, so the magazine thought it timely to find…
2492: Little man
Unusually this week, one unclued light includes the theme word which can also be linked with all the other unclued…
Puzzle no. 639
White to play. Giri-Wojtaszek, Wijk aan Zee 2021. On his last move, Black waited with 48… Ba1-b2, yielding White a…
Bridge
The American professor Martin Seligman is one of the most influential psychologists in the world. Known as the father of…
Portrait of the week
Home About 80,000 people in eight places in Surrey, London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Southport and Walsall were asked in door-to-door visits…
A thoroughly modern Romantic
Keats is a much stranger poet than we tend to realise – who shocked his first readers by his vulgarity and gross indecency, says Philip Hensher
High life
Gstaad Imagine a beautiful, sexy woman, an Ava Gardner or a Lily James, with a wart on the end of…
No room at the top
‘Whatever your background,’ Margaret Thatcher told the Sun’s readers in 1983, she was determined that ‘you have a chance to…
Apocalypse then
Tragically, the current pandemic lends this sparkling study of London in its most decisive century a grim topicality — for…
No regrets
Kim Philby once remarked to the journalist Murray Sayle that ‘to betray, you must first belong. I never belonged’. Kim,…
Anonymous alcoholics
Mick Herron has been called ‘the John le Carré of his generation’ by the crime writer Val McDermid, and in…
The monk’s tale
In an essay for Prospect a few years back the writer Leo Benedictus noticed how many contemporary novels used what…
Rich man, bankrupt, thief
‘Everyone’s heard of Ghislaine Maxwell,’ says the blurb for Power: The Maxwells, a podcast series launched last month. ‘But there’s…
Matthew Sweet: Catspaw
Grade: A– The early 1990s were a lovely time for rock music: Beck, Sparklehorse, Sugar, Green on Red and Royal…
Misery handed on
What happens to a child raised without love? This is the agonising question that the American lawyer Justine Cowan braces…
The turf
Dry January it wasn’t and I am not referring to the trainers who normally undergo an annual abstinence but who…
Low life
I was tipped off to meet a white Hyundai at a French motorway toll rest area at 2.30 p.m. (I…
