Portrait of the Week: Boris mocks May and Hammond mocks Boris
Home Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, played a well-nourished Banquo’s Ghost at the Conservative party conference, where Theresa May,…
Who to believe: calculating Kavanaugh or forgetful Ford?
A weekend news report says Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s childhood has been scrutinised by colleagues ‘for clues to understanding this…
The decisive moment
From ‘News of the week’, 5 October 1918: The Western Front is now aflame from the sea to Verdun. This…
Corbyn’s false democracy
At the Labour party conference, Jeremy Corbyn said that he would do whatever his party members told him to. This,…
Letters: What Adam Smith would say about Trump’s tariffs
What would Smith say? Sir: Adam Smith’s writings were so definitive that it is said one can find the kernel…
Why I wanted to be called C.H. Moore
There are, one must admit, things to be said against Boris Johnson, but his leading critics do not understand that…
Wanted: a Tory domestic agenda
Jeremy Corbyn used to be a punchline at the Conservative party conference. Tories believed that his election as Labour leader…
The truth is we prefer to lie
There are no necessary truths any more. Everything is contingent. And those contingencies are the consequence not of what happens…
The curse of having to go vegan
I’m on a no-alcohol, no-caffeine, no-sugar, vegan diet. It’s less fun than it sounds. Occasionally I cheat, but mostly I…
Yes, we London cyclists really are a nasty lot
One morning a long time ago, when the Spectator offices were still in Bloomsbury, I hopped my bike up onto…
If the Tories are ‘the party of business’, the PM should listen – before it’s too late
‘Let me say it, loud and clear: the Conservative party is, and always will be, the party of business,’ declared…
Trans rights have gone wrong
Your 13-year-old daughter tells a teacher that’s she’s uncomfortable with her body. She prefers trousers to skirts, football to ballet.…
Don’t tell the parents: the official guidance to teachers of ‘trans children’
How can we help transgender children? This is a question greatly exercising politicians and many are confused about what to…
The joys of ‘Neglexit’: not being governed has its good points
The new political buzzword is ‘Neglexit’: the state of being in which, because the government is so wrapped up in…
The nowhere man of France: Corbyn’s new pal Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Jeremy Corbyn is promising to forge closer ties with his French counterpart Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the hard-left La…
A Greek tragedy: how the EU is destroying a country
‘Now Greece can finally turn the page in a crisis that has lasted too long. The worst is over.’ With…
All hail the return of the crane
The RSPB regularly gets calls from people who have seen ‘a funny bird’. ‘It’s got a red head and it’s…
Discovering Thomas Mann by motorbike
In Thomas Mann’s astonishing novel The Magic Mountain the indolent young Hans Castorp visits his brave, terminally ill soldier cousin…
Andrew Roberts’s generous new biography of the man who saved us in our darkest hour, Churchill reviewed
![Giving the famous V-sign at the opening of RAAF headquarters, Croydon, 1948 [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/churchill.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Churchill must be the most written-about figure in public life since Napoleon Bonaparte (a subject, incidentally, to which Andrew Roberts…
Love is blind, but lust is not; William Boyd’s 15th novel reviewed
William Boyd’s 15th novel begins well enough. In 1894 Edinburgh, a 24-year-old piano tuner is promoted to the Paris branch…
Behind the Throne is a cracking read about a neglected subject – the royal household
Never judge a book by its cover. To look at, this is a coffee-table book with shiny pages which make…
It is not the masterpieces that were lost, but the collectors, Natalya Semenova rights a wrong
It is not as surprising at it sounds that two of the greatest collectors of modern art should have been…
The disaster of Vietnam and the men who can’t get over it
Many wars have outsized and enduring effects on the societies that fight them, but for Americans the Vietnam war has…
To reflect on the brilliance of your writing, you had better be sure of its brilliance
Nominative determinism is the term for that pleasing accord you occasionally find between name and profession: the immigration minister named…
A sinister feeling hangs over Sarah Moss’s claustrophobic sixth novel
Sarah Moss’s concise, claustrophobic sixth novel concerns the perils of family life. The narrator Silvie is a frustrated 17-year-old on…
