A new era of nuclear weapons is here
The world is moving into a more dangerous age. According to the Peace Research Institute Oslo, last year set a…
Don’t rule out a Mandelson comeback
Daniel Kruger is a good and thoughtful man, whom I used to employ as a leader writer before he left…
Weimar Britain: lessons from history in radical times
The Ancient Greeks believed the past was in front of us and the future behind. Man could look history in…
My new show with Andrew Lloyd Webber
The week of my cricket team’s annual tour of Cornwall. I formed Heartaches CC in 1973 and 765 games later…
Starmer’s battle against the King of the North
After Keir Starmer’s calamitous fortnight, the No. 10 official was reflective: ‘Some people say: “Your worst day in government is…
Portrait of the week: Charlie Kirk killed, Peter Mandelson sacked and Harry takes tea with the King
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, asked Lord Mandelson to step back as ambassador to Washington. This followed the…
The failure of Britain’s elite universities
Politicians, authors, priests and the occasional Spectator editor have all served as the Oxford Union’s president over its 200-year history.…
The joy of guided walks
‘You should be pointing at things with an umbrella for a living,’ said my brother. He’d come to visit me…
Why would your dead daughter climb out of her grave to harm you?
John Blair investigates the bizarre phenomenon of ‘corpse-killing’, and the fear in 19th-century New England that children, post mortem, were under demonic control
The Oxford Union’s lynch-mob mentality
The case of George Abaraonye, the incoming Oxford Union president who rejoiced in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, has provoked…
Sondheim understood Seurat better than the National Gallery
In Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim catches something of what makes Georges Seurat so brilliant – not…
Cicero’s tips for the Labour party
Labour may be in a bit of a mess, but Cicero (d. 43 bc) has some top tips. ‘Let conscience…
Suede turn their fine new record to mush at the Southbank
I think a lot about Wishbone Ash. A disproportionate amount. Partly because I have had to listen to them for…
Never date a German man
Call me unpatriotic but, although I’m German, nothing could ever have persuaded me to date a German man. I married…
Is Charlie Kirk’s murder really a ‘watershed’?
The Charlie Kirk assassination has triggered a spate of duelling death counts. The usual media suspects on both sides of…
Who marches against Tommy Robinson?
Isn’t it time we banned such marches as the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally, given the thuggery and lawlessness which ensued?…
Bring on the robot-run railways!
I awoke on Sunday to what felt like a Brave New World moment: Radio 4’s news-reader reciting an unedited Downing…
‘Like a cockroach, I refuse to die’: a meeting with the Tate brothers
‘I detest lateness,’ texts Tristan Tate, who’s offered to pick me up from a hotel in Bucharest. ‘So I’ll either…
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is anything but
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is, I have to tell you, anything but. I should have trusted the trailer. When…
Is the countryside racist?
Crossing the floor Danny Kruger defected from the Tories to Reform, the first sitting MP to do so. Which parties…
The rise of performative reading
‘To be or not to be’ may be the question but when it comes to eliciting answers, I’ve always preferred…
Anna Netrebko’s still got it
In the opera world, you’re never far from a Tosca and last week we had two of them, both brand…
The political resurrection of Christianity
There is a passage in Milan Kundera’s novelisitic essay ‘Testaments Betrayed’ where he writes about the nature of history. Man…
