The art of persuasion
It’s hard to admire communist art with an entirely clear conscience. The centenary of the October revolution, which falls this…
High life
I hate to say this, but the quality of life in the Bagel has crashed in a Harvey Weinstein-like way.…
The kids aren’t all right
Our histrionic parenting is making today’s young people mad, unhappy and fat
The danger of no danger
We all know about helicopter parents and how terrible they can be. In New York, where I live, a mother…
Portrait of the week
Home Of perhaps 400 Britons returned from the former territory of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, those who…
Arabian nights
Recall the media coverage at the height of the Jimmy Savile scandal, times it by about a thousand, and you…
Diary
To ITV’s London headquarters at the ungodly hour of 3.30 a.m. Piers Morgan is sunning himself in Beverly Hills and I’m…
Real life
The Albanian builders have started a turf war in my kitchen. The hostilities broke out suddenly. One minute the builders…
The universal credit crunch
It only dawned on me in late summer just how terrible our new benefits system, universal credit, might be both…
The turf
Racing’s finances depend on as many people as possible betting, so it seemed a touch ironic that Responsible Gambling Awareness…
Destitute Britain
I became aware that there was real destitution in modern Britain five years ago. Destitution, as I see it, arises…
Bridge
When I started playing bridge in earnest, the first tournament I entered was the EBU’s Autumn Congress, which back then…
The return of Lady Muck
My sainted mum was of untarnished working-class blood — she worked, variously, as a cleaner, factory hand and shop assistant…
Letters
Meeting halfway Sir: If our Brexit negotiator David Davis has not read Robert Tombs’s wonderful article ‘Lost in translation’ (21…
Brief encounter
Books on the world championship matches used to appear regularly, with some having multiple written accounts. In recent years, though,…
no. 480
Black to play. This position is from Arda-Melia, Antalya 2017. How can Black win? Answers to me at The Spectator…
The idiot box
How to sum up David Frost? The lazy writer’s friend, aka Wikipedia, calls him ‘an English journalist, comedian, writer, media…
A model life
This season, as London fashion week was starting, Vogue posted a video following the new model of the moment Kaia…
Northern frights
In Competition No. 3021 you were invited to compose terrifying lullabies. Lorca wondered why ‘Spain reserved the most potent songs…
Greece Notebook
I have come to Greece in search of sanity over Brexit. Ostensibly it is a symposium to discuss relations between…
2333: Unchangeable
One unclued light is a three-word phrase indicating the way in which each of the answers to clues in italics…
Lewes
Autumn is upon us, and the streets are full of families in fancy dress. People of all ages are dressing…
to 2330: IMAGE
The poem ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ (originally ‘XXII’) by William Carlos Williams is considered perhaps the foremost example of IMAGISM. First…
The tyranny of the bedtime story
All surveys carried out by retail businesses with a view to generating press coverage should be treated with extreme caution,…
