Market forces: let’s get this party started safe
As we reach the peak of music festival season in Australia, it’s become an unfortunate probability that multiple young Australians…
Labor’s housing affordability mess: profit for the few, pain for the many
Labor’s two-pronged housing affordability package has them rowing the same boat in both directions, expending a lot of taxpayer dollars…
Neil Prakash: leave him to his victims’ mercy
The controversy surrounding the government’s attempts to strip ISIS member Neil Prakash of his Australian citizenship is at a stalemate,…
A dozen migrants in Kent is not a crisis. But government panic could turn it into one
It has been a messy start to the new year for Sajid Javid. For months now, migrants using small boats…
Portrait of the week: A migrant ‘crisis’, Gatwick drone awards and Donald Trump to withdraw troops from Syria
Home The number of would-be migrants known to have reached England in small boats from France in the last two…
The telltale signs your child is texting about Jeeves and Wooster
You’ll be relieved to learn my penguin is back. ‘How long was it gone?’ you ask. About six months. ‘And…
A model president
From The Spectator, 4 January 1919: President Wilson arrived in London on Thursday week, and was greeted with full expression…
How the year began
Why are our years structured as they are? Censorinus in his de die natali (‘Birthday Book’) for his chum Caerellius…
How Spanish was the Spanish flu?
Paths of infection 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the height of the Spanish flu pandemic which is believed to…
Letters: Is this a solution to the post-Brexit world?
Lords reform Sir: How astonishing that the historian Robert Tombs (‘Beyond Brexit’, 15 December) should think that the Lords might…
Will 2019 be Jeremy Corbyn’s year?
It’s hard to think of a time when an opposition leader has had such a promising start to the new…
The BBC’s quest to make Watership Down woke
For a while, as a 13-year-old, I was obsessed with rabbits — the consequence of having read Watership Down by…
We don’t need new categories for sexuality – we need to abolish categories
Long-suffering Spectator readers deserve a seasonal break from yet another Remoaner diatribe from me. My last on this page, making…
Why flee France?
Pitching your tent for weeks on end in the cold and mud, with no power or plumbing. Running in a…
A seven-year winter or a pleasant 2019? Your guess is as good as mine
A friend reminds me that she sold her house last summer because I warned her 18 months ago that Brexit…
A populist surge in the May 2019 elections could change the face of the EU forever
There is a strange pre-revolutionary atmosphere in Brussels. At the various receptions and dinners before we broke up for Christmas,…
Europe is a continent in crisis – where lo-vis people now wear high-vis jackets
The ‘yellow vest’ protests against President Emmanuel Macron that swept through Paris and other French cities last month have evoked…
Iran’s boat people — and why they’re coming to Britain
When the migrant crisis started, about three years ago, it was seen as a mainly Syrian affair. Caught in the…
Can men call women ‘girls’?
Talking to someone in her mid-twenties recently, I mentioned someone else of the same age. ‘She’s a really talented girl,’…
The Iolaire was packed with island men who could have sailed her home with ease
The centenaries of the Great War came to a close in November with commemorations of the 1918 Armistice. But one…
‘Brexit unleased something monstrous’: James Graham interviewed
‘I try to interpret the most generous version of somebody’s actions,’ says the dramatist James Graham. This rare ability to…
Booze, cigarettes and Auberon Waugh: Remembering The Spectator’s 1970s revival
‘The Spectator, having quite recently been a very bad magazine, is at present a very good one.’ Those gratifying words…
Tuning up to Linz
You never know who you might meet on a river cruise. It was my 89-year-old father-in-law, Noel, who first recognised…
Beautiful untamed Trieste, aka the Capital of Nowhere
‘Welcome to the free territory of Trieste,’ reads the sign in the shop window. ‘US and UK come back!’ For…
Gibraltar, the rock of ages past
How lazy, snobbish and wrong it is to mock Gibraltar for the lager and fish and chips clichés. Yes, you…
