Barometer
Lynx on the loose — A Eurasian lynx escaped from a zoo in Wales, pre-empting plans to introduce six of…
Peter Hitchens: Why I climbed on my soapbox after refusing to sign a university’s ‘free speech’ contract
Where better to be than in Liverpool on a crisp autumn evening, haranguing an open-air meeting of students? I hadn’t…
Rumours of sexual misconduct swirl around Westminster
Home A great ferment of accusations of sexual impropriety was made against people in Parliament and out of it. Bex…
Letters: the tyranny of ‘equality of outcome’ in education
Equality of outcome Sir: Rod Liddle exposes some deep flaws in the way children are prepared to play their part…
Women used to forgive men their defects, but the quality of mercy is under strain
Poor Gordon Brown. He embodies the problem traditionally associated with being male, which is that our sex finds it difficult…
What to do about the returning jihadis
In normal times, the reported return of 400 Isis fighters to Britain would be the biggest story out there. But…
It’s not victim shaming to suggest there might be two sides to every story
Somewhere towards the end of the 1980s I was suddenly promoted three grades upwards in my job at the BBC;…
When did fiction become so dangerous?
The assignment of books for review has always been haphazard. Fellow fiction writers can be tempted either to undermine the…
Ignore the Twitter cry-bully brigade – on social media, you reap what you sow
The nastiest person on Twitter has quit Twitter. Because I’m so generous I shan’t mention his name. All I’ll say…
The City needs to make new friends but is becoming pals with Putin a step too far?
In connection with the receding possibility of a London Stock Exchange listing for Saudi Aramco, I wrote that the City…
The sexual reformation has opened up a schism between women and men
Nell Minow, an American film critic, recently described how in 2010 she had interviewed the Friends actor David Schwimmer. When…
The consequence of this new sexual counter-revolution? No sex at all
We are in the middle of a profound shift in our attitude towards sex. A sexual counter-revolution, if you will.…
Special counsel Robert Mueller is closing in on Paul Manafort – and Trump should be worried
Kiev Before he was Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort worked for the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych started…
Netanyahu’s triumph means a one-state Israel must soon choose democracy – or apartheid
There are many reasons political journalists get so many things so badly wrong. One is our tendency to overvalue liberal…
Liberians so love the murderous Charles Taylor they want his ex-wife to rule
James Sackie would make a good frontman for a campaign to help ex-child soldiers. At the age of 17, he…
As a trainee teacher, I saw the damage the SNP is inflicting on Scottish education
Once one of the best in the world, Scotland’s education system has been steadily marching backwards for the past ten…
Dinner at Modigliani’s
When you arrive for dinner and your host is massaging a purple cauliflower, you know you’re in for an interesting…
Reza Aslan doesn’t fear God. But should he fear his fellow Muslims?
Eating human brains, burying one’s face in dead people’s ashes and publicly deriding the president of the United States as…
Gerry Adams: from jail to the Dail
When I recently asked a sardonic Northern Irish friend what historical figures Gerry Adams resembled, the tasteless reply came back:…
People and place: an outstanding archive of rural Britain
In 1970 I wandered around an unfamiliar part of West Devon. Down a grassy lane I came across a farmyard…
Ali Smith’s Winter is calm, cool and consoling
In 1939, Barbara Hepworth gathered her children and her chisels and fled Hampstead for Cornwall. She expected war to challenge…
A book about sleep that will keep you up all night
I’ve read several books about sleep recently, and their authors all tell me the same three things. The first is…
From blissful dawn to bleak despair: the end of the revolutionary dream
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey were undergraduates when they met in June 1794, Coleridge at Cambridge university and Southey…
Writers’ letters: Evelyn Waugh on Auberon Waugh
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The forgotten history of the Tube’s ‘poster girls’
Every weekday, I travel by Tube to The Spectator’s office, staring at the posters plastered all over the walls. I…
