Conservative compassion
One of the strange quirks of modern politics is the perception that it’s the Left who are concerned with justice…
Britain has lost control of the Brexit talks
If Brexit was going to be as easy as some of its advocates had believed, we would not have had…
British fishermen sold down the river in Brexit transition deal
Home Britain and the European Union agreed on a transitional period after Brexit on 29 March 2019 until the end…
Brexit saved my marriage. Could Putin wreck it?
I went to a dinner for Toby Young, who has had some troubles of late, at this magazine’s gracious HQ,…
Jeremy Corbyn’s hat and the art of photo manipulation
Spin doctors The BBC has denied it photoshopped a Newsnight backdrop to make Jeremy Corbyn’s hat look more Russian. The…
Putin follows the example of Octavian
Barely a day passes without yet another Russian explanation for the Salisbury nerve agent attack. What’s new? Such disinformation has…
It is the Europhiles who are the head-bangers now
For almost as long as I can remember, Eurosceptic Tory MPs have been defined by the media as ‘head-bangers’. As…
The Tories are risking their reputation as the party of law and order
Theresa May’s Home Office record is normally off limits at cabinet. But when ministers discussed the government’s strategy for reducing…
Our response to the nerve gas attack has been an act of self-harm
There was a growling Russian maniac on the BBC’s Today programme last week, an MP from the United Russia party…
The vlogging fantasy that bewitches our children
My friend’s ten-year-old daughter has a new hobby. Like many of her school pals, she hopes to become a video…
I wish I had kept my Brummie accent. I’d be taken more seriously
‘No one wants to send their son to Eton any more,’ I learned from last week’s Spectator Schools supplement. It…
Sorry fishermen, but we were never going to win back control of our waters
My decision to vote Remain was driven in part by an exercise in which I tried to identify anyone close…
Big data is watching you – and it wants your vote
From the outside it all looked haphazard and frenzied. A campaign that was skidding from scandal to crisis on its…
Exposed: Our dangerous dependency on antidepressants
We have become a nation of sad pill-poppers. The British, once Churchill’s ‘lion-hearted nation’, are now among the most depressed…
Antidepressants saved me – but they made my mental health worse
Antidepressants saved my life, I am sure of that. But I am also certain they made my mental illness much…
At the deathbed of Sudan, the last male northern white rhino
Laikipia, Kenya Before vets put him down in Kenya this week, I attended the deathbed of Sudan, the…
The real Russian housewives of Knightsbridge
The Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Knightsbridge is nestled in a maze of mews streets and embassy rows somewhere between Harrods…
I’d rather be fat-shamed than have cancer
Sofie Hagen is a young Danish comic I admire. I didn’t see her most recent show, Dead Baby Frog, but…
The joy of evensong
When Palestrina wrote his Mass settings and motets, or J.S. Bach his cantatas and passions, they could not have imagined…
The disappearing acts of Joseph Gray, master of military camouflage
On a night in Paris in 1914, Gertrude Stein was walking with Picasso when the first camouflaged trucks passed by.…
A Book of Chocolate Saints: an Indian novel like no other
The Indian poet Jeet Thayil’s first novel, Narcopolis, charted a two-decade-long descent into the underworlds of Mumbai and addiction. One…
Paris at its most liberated: the turbulent 1940s
We all have our favourite period of Parisian history, be it the Revolution, the Belle Époque or the swinging 1960s…
Why are there no pubs called after Lord North?
If you associate Lord Salisbury more with a pub than with politics, here is Andrew Gimson to the rescue, with…
The Friendly Ones: a novel about prejudice of all kinds:
Readers should skim past the blurb of The Friendly Ones. The novel is about prejudice, of many different kinds; but…
For some soldiers, the VC was easier to win than to wear
‘The Victoria Cross,’ gushed a mid-19th-century contributor to the Art Journal, ‘is thoroughly English in every particular. Given alike to…
