If only the Tories understood economics
‘I don’t think I’m quite as Austrian as you are,’ a Tory minister said to me the other day. And…
The Conservatives admit they have a problem – but can they solve it?
For those who don’t want Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister, the Tory conference was half encouraging and half depressing.…
Bridge
Twenty-five years ago, Zia Mahmood offered a £1 million bet that no team of his choosing could ever be beaten…
Historic
Congratulations to the organisational team of the Isle of Man Masters, which concluded last weekend. They assembled what must have…
no. 477
White to play. This is from Anand-Esserman, Isle of Man 2017. White now killed off the exposed black king. What…
to 2327: Exhibition
Five unclued lights (1D, 14, 21, 24 and 41) are titles of paintings by EDWARD HOPPER (5 39). First prize…
High life
The death of the richest woman on this planet, as the tabloids dubbed Liliane Bettencourt, brought back some vivid memories,…
Portrait of the week
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told her audience at the Conservative party conference that she wanted to continue, like…
The media is paying too much homage to Catalonia
However much we try — and lots of us don’t — we fall for the power of the photo-image. So…
Corporate subsidies don’t keep the lights on
A wise man once told me watching business people talk about economics is like watching a dog walk on its…
The same-sex marriage revolution: same as them all
David Sergeant chilling piece “What’s changed in Britain since same-sex marriage?” describes the way in Britain the anti-marriage revolutionary agenda…
Reshuffling the ABC is futile
So many promises: each as useless as the last. What is the point of the ABCs overhaul of current affairs…
Teaching at Maechaem
For some weeks now in Thailand I’ve been teaching English to teenagers with a disability, many of them in wheelchairs…
Repeating Turnbull’s blunder
Watching the Conservatives fall apart over leadership gives me uncanny déjà vu after Australian politics. In the last eight years, Australia has…
The Spectator’s Notes
However much we try — and lots of us don’t — we fall for the power of the photo-image. So…
Playing it safe
BBC1’s latest Sunday-night drama The Last Post, about a British military base in Aden in 1965, feels like a programme…
Vice and virtue
‘Can the ultimate betrayal ever be forgiven?’ screams the publicity for The Judas Passion, transforming a Biblical drama into a…
Pole position
Did you know that they used to make the Fiat 126 in the Eastern bloc? They did, apparently. There was…
Verbal diarrhoea
In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus…
The pride of Australia
When she graduated from university in Australia, Sarah Crowe decided to travel. So she sold her car, raised whatever other…
Savage beauty
Could it, at times, be frustrating to have taken one of the world’s most famous photographs? Steve McCurry’s ‘Afghan Girl’…
Split decision
Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…
2330: Image
10 5/9/34/30D/7/35/4/1D is a poem quoted in full in ODQ. The author’s surname (and indeed first name) appears at 26.…
It’s about more than marriage. Just ask a Pom…
I run Britain’s oldest conservative think tank, the Bow Group, and in 2012 I opposed the then Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposed Same-Sex…
Who’s f–king whom at the Department of Environment and Energy?
The Department of Environment and Energy – a strange marriage if ever there was one! It would seem one of…
