Will no one ever take on the Green Blob?
Gosh it hurts when your little corner of paradise is destroyed by a few idiots’ ignorance and greed. This is…
I admit it – I’m a smartphone addict
I am often extremely dismissive of people immersed in their smartphones. I tut at the mole-ish pedestrians who step out…
How a betting business saved Stoke-on-Trent
I wrote last week of my fear that we’ll never ‘take back control of our fish’, as Brexiteers ardently wish,…
Money is already draining from Britain but because of Corbyn, not Brexit
What’s wrong with UK financial markets? The global economy is recovering, but British stocks and shares are not keeping pace.…
Does Putin intend to go to war with Ukraine?
On Europe’s eastern borderlands, trouble is brewing. Two headstrong leaders — Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko —…
A biographer’s tale: beware of meeting your literary heroes
Germaine Greer described biographers as ‘vultures’. I prefer to think of myself as a version of Philip Marlowe or Sam…
The Italian crisis
For those who believe in the European project, Brexit is a headache. Italy, on the other hand, is a bloody…
Homelessness isn’t a government priority. It should be
King’s Cross station at 10.30 p.m. is not a happy place. Most commuters have long returned to their centrally heated…
Lee Child: How to write – and get revenge
![Spilling ink: Lee Child [AXEL DUPEUX]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Sam_Leith_feature.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
According to which bit of hype you read, there’s a copy of one of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers sold…
The Isle of Grain
Perched on the edge of the Medway about 15 miles from Rochester is the Isle of Grain, a mass of…
Michelle Obama: ‘I was happy that Barack’s career came first’
‘To me, he was sort of like a unicorn,’ writes Mrs Obama, looking back on her courtship days with Barack.…
Will it be kid pie this Christmas?
A long and messy business is how the chef Rowley Leigh explains his preferred way of eating. Picking at a…
China’s power grab steps up apace
![The China-Russia East Route pipeline under construction in 2017. At 3,968 km in length, it is designed to carry 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia’s Far East to Shanghai. [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Pipeline.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Five years ago President Xi Jinping gave a speech in Kazakhstan, launching the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’, a wildly ambitious…
Bertie takes on the Black Shorts: Jeeves and the King of Clubs, by Ben Schott, reviewed
In 2016, inspired by reports that Donald Trump’s butler had recommended the assassination of Barack Obama, Ben Schott wrote a…
The peculiar allure of the Pyrenees
On 26 August 1880 Henry Russell consummated his marriage in an unusual way. He was, to his own mind, married…
Couldn’t artists let one read when sitting for them?
The 20th-century painter Balthus once suggested that the author of a book about him began with the words: ‘Balthus is…
The I’s have it: the latest debut novels reviewed
The large number of novels written in the first person would suggest it’s an easy voice to pull off: that…
Shakespeare as political pamphleteer
![The Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated ‘The Rape of Lucrece’. [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/The_Earl_of_Southampton.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece is a puzzling and often terrible poem. Lucrece, the devout wife of Collatine, is raped by…
Rows backstage at the National Theatre
It is, proclaimed Charles Wyndham in 1908, ‘an institution alien to the spirit of our nation’. The alien having long…
For Marie Colvin, mortal danger was what made life worth living
![Marie Colvin, a year before her death. [Rex Features]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Marie_Colvin.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
When Britain finally lowered the flag in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2007, the army’s top brass valiantly claimed…
A short history of art deco – from high art to two-tone shoes, garden gates to Twiggy
![Twiggy photographed by Justin de Villeneuve in the Rainbow Room at Big Biba, early 1970s. [JUSTIN DE VILLENEUVE]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/USE_JDV_TW046.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
On 10 September 1973 the 1930s Kensington High Street department store formerly known as Derry & Toms reopened as Big…
1975 was a great year for pop – worthy of a better band than The 1975
Grade: C A derided year in pop music, 1975 — and yet a great one. The mainstream was horrible, but…
As a symphonist, Mieczyslaw Weinberg was a master: Weinberg Weekend reviewed
It’s a strange compliment to pay a composer — that the most profound impression their music makes is of an…
Refreshingly understated: BBC1’s Mrs Wilson reviewed
Shortly before her husband’s funeral, the undertaker told the eponymous main character in Mrs Wilson (BBC1, Tuesday) that, ‘We’re here…
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
