Survivor’s notebook
I write this on Easter Sunday, sitting comfortably at home, recovering from my brush with Covid-19. I was hospitalised for…
Puzzle no. 600
Black to play. Andrew Stone–Martin Jogstad, 4NCL Online, April 2020. The queen is trapped on f4, so 1…Rxg5 looks worth…
Stir crazy
My husband left a copy of The Spectator open on the table by his chair, next to the little cardboard…
We’re all guilty of recruiting this virus to our cause
There must be a quote from Shakespeare for this, but so far I haven’t found it. It’s the way we…
Village of the damned peculiar
I doubt whether any book would entice me more than a horrible hybrid of crimefiction, speculative fantasy, weird religion and…
Public enemy
Many performers hated playing live. But freed from the stage they often made their best and wildest work, argues Graeme Thomson
Lose some, win more
‘Beauty is pain,’ the model Gigi Hadid asserts. She’s one of the successful, rich people quizzed by William Leith in…
Streams of consciousness
Geography can be history and history geography — and sometimes the most obvious things are overlooked. Laurence C. Smith’s Rivers…
The great philanderer
Michael Arditti has never held back from difficult or unfashionable subjects. His dozen novels, including the prize-winning Easter, as well…
Within these walls
High Tide got there first. The East Anglian theatre company has produced a series of lockdown mini-dramas, Love in the…
A time to keep silence
‘You’re never alone with a Strand,’ went the misbegotten advertisement for a new cigarette in 1959. What the copywriter didn’t…
Testing times
Imagine rooting for the Australian cricket team. If you’re Scottish, Welsh or Irish — or Australian obviously — it might…
World Health Shambles
The United States has long regarded itself as better prepared for a pandemic than any other country in the world,…
The great seducerBryan Appleyard
Hud is a film that has haunted me for decades. I was never sure why. It seemed to be something…
The milk of paradise?
Until fairly recently, all over the western world there were specialised eating places catering largely for Jews who respected the…
Sinister toy story
We often hear that science fiction — or ‘speculative’ fiction, as the buffs prefer — can draw premonitory outlines of…
An ordinary Joe
Last month, just before coronavirus conquered the airwaves entirely, millions of Americans gave up two hours to hear a professor…
Globally and locally, we need stronger business models for survival
When I wrote last week about business-to-business pain-sharing for survival, I was naturally thinking first about UK companies. I say…
To 2450: Titled Men
Alexandre DUMAS père wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, whose eponymous characters were Athos, Porthos, Aramis…
When life becomes art
Covid-19 has not yet reached its peak but already the moguls of the small screen are plotting how to monetise,…
Nazi on the run
In 1926, while putting in place the repressive laws and decrees that would define his dictatorship, Mussolini appointed a new…
Another man with a mission
How refreshing in a time of general sensitivity to find a book intended to infuriate and debunk. Welcome to the…
The Spectator’s Notes
We know, because of the lack of widespread testing, that incidences of Covid-19 are under-reported. What is less well known…
