Brexit brings us endless little beakers of joy
The thing that got me about the photo-graph which prompted the Daily Mail’s harmless but now infamous headline ‘Never mind…
An actor’s notebook
It is delightful to be writing for a magazine I’ve read, man and boy, since I was 15. Such is…
Bridge
‘Ducking is for experts. Don’t try it.’ So says my partner Artur Malinowski every time I duck a trick in…
Fifty glorious years
Whatever else you may say about it, the USSR certainly created the greatest national chess-playing machine the world has ever…
no. 450
Black to play. This position is from Gligoric-Stein, Moscow 1967. Can you spot Black’s winning coup? Answers to me at…
Major to minor
Ghost in the Shell is the Hollywood live-action remake of the 1995 Japanese anime of the same name and it’s…
A word in your ear
Do you, or do you not, fork out for an audioguide — one of those necklace-like, strappy contraptions you’re offered…
Cut it out
How do you make a work of art? One method is to cut things up and stick them back together…
Ed’s diner
In a world where politicians can turn into newspaper editors and former newspaper editors can seize the most coveted job…
Rued awakening
It’s always promising when the orchestra won’t fit on the stage. For the UK première, some 97 years after it…
LA story
BREAKING NEWS: ‘Enjoyable play found at Royal Court.’ Generally, the Court likes to send its customers home feeling depressed, guilty,…
These foolish things
In Competition No. 2991 you were invited to submit an April Fool disguised as a serious news feature that contains…
to 2300: The law
Extra letters in clues give CONSTABLES, defining 7, 21 and 39. Other unclued lights are CONS (12, 16, 18) and…
High life
Gstaad It’s my last week in the Alps, and the snow is gone, replaced by brilliant sunshine. Silence reigns, broken…
Does the truth about Trump’s art of the deal really matter?
How good a businessman is Donald Trump? Maybe the answer doesn’t matter, since barring death or impeachment he’ll be the…
The Spectator’s Notes
An email from the high-minded Carnegie Endowment, marking the triggering of Article 50 and the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of…
Oh! What a lovely Waugh
Jack Whitehall could have been perfectly awful as Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall (BBC1, Fridays). He has spent most…
Death becomes her
Opera is littered with the bodies of abandoned women. Step over Dido and Gilda, and you’ll still stumble into Donna…
Clean end of the turd
I have received an email from the Liberal Party’s Federal office: ‘The Turnbull Coalition Government is making the Racial Discrimination…
Freedom’s sunset
What is happening in America today should send shivers down the spine of every freedom-loving person on the planet. This…
Tantrum of the climate alarmists
Of all the hot air blown out by eco-alarmists, their maddest claim, the one least founded in truth, is that…
Beyond blue ties
Take a deep breath. It’s started and already doesn’t look good. Last week, real life tears caused flooding when it…
Hollywood goes East
It’s kind of surreal being here.’ The general sentiment, no doubt, of most people on planet Earth right now, but…
