Portrait of the week
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, invited the media to take a photograph of her beginning a holiday with her…
Diary
As pictures go, it could be career death. An amazing young talent caught in a compromising position with two older…
Barometer
But me no butts Boris Johnson, being taught a Maori head-to-head greeting, joked that it might be ‘misinterpreted in a…
Health and personal choice
Public health specialist Sir Michael Marmot has blamed ‘the cuts’ for the rise in dementia among the elderly, resulting in…
The dark clouds threatening Brexit
It’s summertime and the living is easy… unless you’re a civil servant working on Brexit. Whitehall has recognised that the…
If Brexit is dying, what about democracy?
Never meet your enemies — you might like them, and that ruins stuff. I had dinner with the former Archbishop…
The Spectator’s Notes
The pre-commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales is already in full swing. She…
Bridge
This is a great time to be a bridge professional — not just for the world’s top players, who have…
British championship
This year’s British Championship starts on Saturday and is endowed with an outstanding prize fund supplied by Capital Developments Waterloo…
no. 467
White to play. This position is from McShane-Istratescu, London 2013. How did White conclude his kingside attack with a fine…
Goodwood
The South Downs cover 260 sq miles from Hampshire’s Itchen Valley to Eastbourne in East Sussex. Nestled near the southernmost…
Show up and show off
The Edinburgh Festival was founded as a response to war. The inaugural event, held in 1947, was the brainchild of…
Maximum wattage
On his deathbed in 1904, George Frederic Watts saw a extraordinary spectacle. He witnessed the universe coming into being: the…
Balkan brass
When brass instruments with button-operated valves were introduced in the second half of the 19th century, music-making changed. Once requiring…
What stopped Stoppard?
Two programmes this week presented two radically different world views, or rather ways of life. Aditya Chakrabortty’s series for Radio…
1967 and all that
As you may have spotted, the BBC is marking the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality with an…
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
When you first encounter it, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis can sound like the Ninth Symphony with more singing but no tunes.…
‘I like making things’
Sir James Dyson would make a good therapist for anxious Brexiteers. Everything about him is comfortingly precise — his manner…
Trump’s eastern front
Kiev There is no lavatory paper to be found in government buildings in Kiev. Plan ahead, locals advise, if you…
Persistent buggers
The credit for decriminalising male homosexuality in 1967 — for those over 21 in England and Wales at least —…
Blatant not latent
It’s exactly 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised male homosexuality, received the Royal Assent on 27…
Diana the diva
Twenty years in August since Diana died. The anniversary is sad for me on many levels — she was definitely…
Strong stuff
The strings sweep upwards, the horns surge, and Leoncavallo’s Zaza throws itself into your arms. We don’t know it yet,…
Heavy-handed
Oliver Cotton is an RSC stalwart who looks like a man born to greatness. Google him. He has the fearless…
Art of diplomacy
The language of diplomacy often requires nuance and subtlety. Not infrequently, it needs to be opaque, to enable differing interpretations;…
