How volunteer groups are taking the place of our absent police
Chris Hargreaves used to be a wellness coach with a promising future in reality television. In 2023, he starred in…
Spectator Competition: Seeing the light
For Competition 3415 you were invited to submit a lost poem by a well-known poet which makes us see him…
The lunacy of emotional support animals
Naturally, the start of the new school year is often stressful for pupils. Perhaps those anxious children returning to their…
What percentage of hotel rooms in Britain are occupied by migrants?
Flagged up The Finnish air force announced that it is to remove the swastika from its flag (which was designed…
‘He’s like a passive-aggressive Gordon Brown’: inside Keir Starmer’s No.10 reshuffle
Isaac Levido, the Tory election strategist who helped secure Boris Johnson’s landslide victory in 2019 and saved the Tories from…
The glorious campness of Reform
It’s a very serious and rancorous time in Britain. Social strife is simmering. The asylum system is at breaking point.…
Bring back the book launch!
It’s that time of year when the local librairie-papeterie in your French holiday village is full of signs for la…
Portrait of the week: Keir Starmer’s reshuffle, Graham Linehan’s arrest and get ready for Storm Wubbo
Home Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, told the Commons that new applications for refugee family reunion visas would be suspended.…
The high price of Britain’s misguided energy policy
Britain’s energy policy is a mess. We have the highest energy prices in the developed world, which is damaging competitiveness,…
Is the British Council really a ‘nest of espionage’?
I worked for nearly a decade at the British Council in East Asia. Every day, under the guise of teaching…
Robert Jenrick: ‘Asylum seekers should be detained in camps’
On a table in Robert Jenrick’s parliamentary office lies the first part of Ronald Hutton’s biography of Oliver Cromwell, a…
The ancient Greek take on human rights
While Greek and Roman thinkers were influential in developing ideas such as citizenship, justice and equality, the notion of universal…
Leave the countryside alone
I used to volunteer at a wildlife sanctuary, counting sheep and goats on an agreeable patch of chalk downland in…
Letters: I’ve earned my final salary pension
Waning interest Sir: Michael Simmons correctly points out that the Treasury’s large-scale issuance of inflation-linked debt is adding heavily to…
Confessions of a yo-yo fat-jabber
I’m feeling quite smug at the moment. Every year I vow to get in shape in the summer, which means…
Whitehall farce: Clown Town, by Mick Herron, reviewed
The implication of a senior government figure in murky dealings during the Troubles presents new problems for Jackson Lamb and his Slow Horses
The man who can save classical music
John Gilhooly is sick of talking about the Arts Council of England. ‘Please tell me you’re not going to ask…
The word ‘artisanal’ has lost its meaning and dignity
The proud, skilled crafts it once described, such as thatching and coppicing, were part of life’s necessities – unlike the ‘handmade’ candles, chutneys and chocolates we now associate with it
The ‘idiot Disneyland’ of Sin City
With his marriage to Joan Didion in difficulties, John Gregory Dunne decamps to Nevada in the early 1970s to capture the dying days of Vegas sleaze
Hell is other academics: Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang, reviewed
A postgraduate student of ‘Analytic Magick’ must rescue the soul of her thesis supervisor from campus hell or risk being stuck in academic limbo on Earth
Relations with Europe provide the key to British postwar politics
Tom McTague shows how the two most consequential decisions for Britain over the past 80 years have been entering the European Union in 1973 and leaving it in 2020
Whatever happened to chicken à la king?
As sure as eggs is eggs, what was once comfort food will be reinvented as fine dining. Lancashire hotpots will…
Whatever happened to the stiff upper lip?
When oversharing – and even inventing – stories of personal trauma is considered ‘validating’ and laudable we are in real trouble, says Darren McGarvey, speaking from experience