Australian arts
It’s all about the money honey. When I awoke to see the front cover of the Weekend Australian’s Review Section…
Next year in Jerusalem
Alex Ryvchin’s book couldn’t possibly have come at a better time. On an almost daily basis, voices opposed to the…
Keith Urban using a Maton guitar, recording Gimme Shelter in Olympic Studios, London
We are critical of ourselves for not designing or manufacturing things any more. Well, there is a contrary example in…
Aussie Life
Everyone wants to get high and have sex while saving money. So says P. J. O’Rourke, the political satirist who…
Time immemorial
Some books elucidate their subject, mapping and sharpening its boundaries. The Clock Mirage, by the mathematician Joseph Mazur, is not…
New word order
I was going to write about Monument Valley, and I suppose I will eventually, but first I have to write…
Trapped in hell
On the morning of 10 March 1920, on the edge of the city of Pachuca in central Mexico, 87 miners…
Everyday exchanges
Conversation is a fascinating subject, says Philip Hensher – but very few people get it right
One who got away
In 1694 London’s streets echoed with a call to the piratical life: Come all you brave boys, whose courage is…
The road to Weimar
Has it ever occurred to you that the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 might have won us the war? Until…
Will Covid change anything?
Earlier this month, a curious report caught my attention. Apparently there exists no rigorously established evidence that electric shock therapy,…
Why Biden might be better for Brexit Britain
At the best of times, US presidential elections require the British government to walk a tightrope. In 1992, a Tory…
The lives of others
Strange, when your own life flatlines, the way in which other lives become suddenly more interesting. I have been retreating…
Giving the game away
This is not a rip-roaring, gonzo gambling adventure. By page 66 this cautious, thoughtful author has still never played a…
Peaty giant, Tuscan flower
The virus is in retreat, the lock-down is crumbling, the sherbet dispensaries will shortly reopen and there is a second…
Who watches the watchdog?
At the beginning of April, I became so frustrated by the supine coverage of the government’s response to the coronavirus…
Ventriloquising
‘What! No one told me,’ my husband shouted when I explained that the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford no longer existed…
Network failures
You can’t discuss racial inequality without using the N-word. And you can’t debate social justice without adding the C-word and…
Beige-washed Burton
The BBC has been having a good pandemic. Stuck at home, a generation raised on podcasts and YouTube has discovered…
A VAT cut won’t boost spending if we don’t trust this government
Should Chancellor Rishi Sunak cut VAT as an emergency stimulus to the consumer economy? When Labour’s Alistair Darling made a…
A troubled past
A decade ago — eheu fugaces labuntur anni — Stuart Evers’s debut story collection, Ten Stories About Smoking, was one…
The Spectator’s Notes
‘White Lives Matter Burnley’ said the plane’s banner as it circled the club’s stadium just after the teams had ‘taken…
