The divine comedy of Friedrich Nietzsche
![Friedrich Nietzche [Photo: Roger-Viollet/Shutterstock]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/26Octlowlife.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
I’ve come back to the empty house for the second time in the six weeks since my mother died. The…
Was our nut-infested plane a death trap?
![[Photo: Alasdair Thomson]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/26Octreallife.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
‘This is your captain speaking, welcome aboard this flight to London Gatwick. As there is a passenger on our flight…
Bridge
A couple of weeks ago two of the most prestigious events in the bridge nutter’s diary took place on the…
Great sacrifices
Impelled by his engineer’s mindset, the former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik wrote a short essay to answer a simple question:…
no. 577
Black to play. From Stepanov–Romanovsky, Lenin-grad 1926. Stepanov resigned two moves earlier, seeing that he would soon lose his queen.…
Going concern
In Competition No. 3121 you were invited to submit a song entitled ‘50 Ways to Leave the White House’. …
2431: Pride of place
The unclued lights (two of two words) be paired and are linked by an anagram of the four letters in…
to 2428: Tracks to the Isles
The unclued lights are stations along the Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh train line, the pairs being 8/9 and 29/39.…
The Intellectual Dark Web is more liberal than you’d think
![Jordan Peterson [Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Toby_Young_4.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
In February last year, Spectator Life ran an article by Douglas Murray on the arrival of a new group of…
Plumbers always have the best restaurant recommendations
Whenever I use the security lane at an airport, I enjoy watching people retrieving their bags and metallic items when…
Dear Mary: Do I have a moral duty to allow Brexit chat at supper parties?
Q. I’ve been having friends to supper for many decades. Although I say it myself, these gatherings have often been…
The finest champagnes do not age
The other night, I dreamt about Brexit. Awakening to the oppression of an urgent task, it took me a few…
Surd
Lewis Carroll, in his Phantasmagoria, and Other Poems (1869), constructed a poem that yielded a double acrostic, with the first…
Andrew Tink
![Andrew Tink. [Photo: Elizabeth Tink]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/CB_26.10.19.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A serious bout of ill-health forced him to abandon a successful career in politics but, in the intervening 10 years,…
Slaving away for human rights
Mauritania in north-west Africa isn’t really a beacon of human rights. Of the 4.5m population, 500,000 are slaves. Regardless, the…
Business/Robbery etc
Beware! It is not merely an economic threat to Australia and the world. There will be far more serious consequences…
Two-faced Aunty
It’s understandable that our national broadcaster feels confused and besieged. So many of her once loyal friends are turning on…
Albo’s climate drought
These are deadly days for Australians trying to eke out a living on the land but spare a thought for…
Democratic Notes
Let’s start with the usual disclaimers. Neither Donald Trump nor Boris Johnson are ideal leaders or paragons of virtue. And…
Insiders won’t go down without a fight
The European Union has a habit of working with the establishment figures in countries to topple governments that…
Diary
I flew into a tempest. Although still early autumn, wild, windy and wet weather ravaged the UK, causing traffic chaos…
Eavesdropping on sin
Whatever the federal government is thinking of doing to protect what the Constitution calls the ‘free exercise’ of religion, it…
Politicians are responsible for the drought
‘I’m going to make a shitload of money.’ Peter, a farmer, listened intently to the merchant banker boasting to the…
Loving the luvvies too much
When it comes to Coalition governments, Michael Corleone of The Godfather doesn’t normally come to mind. Yet they seem to…
