Swash and buckle aplenty
A feeble king and his scheming minister, a hunchback noble and the Daughters of Repentance, a botched assassination and a…
A whirlwind life
The dust cover features one of the best-known caricatures of Richard Wagner, his enormous head in this version opened like…
In praise of LSD
Ayelet Waldman is, surely, not the first writer to have scrolled through a list of ‘Books of the Year’ and…
The nature of genius
On 21 December 1945, Ezra Pound was confined to St Elizabeths hospital in Washington DC. He had broadcast for Rome…
What the secretary saw
What the secretary sawSarah Churchwell Big Bosses: A Working Girl’s Memoir of the Jazz Age by Althea McDowell AltemusUniversity of…
Tricks of the trades
Oddly enough, one of the most historically influential pieces of British writing has turned out to be an essay that…
The classic that conquered the world
Somewhere between his first and second drafts, Victor Hugo decided to change the title of his great novel from Les…
Everyday unhappiness
This is an extraordinarily compelling novel for one in which nothing really happens but everything changes. Sara Baume’s narrator is…
Bedside manners
‘A tricky part of my job,’ the GP said, scrolling through the next patient’s notes, ‘is breaking good news.’ As…
Three’s a crowd
James Lasdun’s latest novel, billed as a psychological thriller, opens in Brooklyn in the summer of 2012. Charlie and his…
I went to Florida to see Disney World. What I found looked like a dying country
I’ve always sensed a whiff of sadness in Florida, perhaps because so many people go there to die. Although not…
For the sake of the constitution, please shut up
One of the striking features of Britain’s unwritten constitution is how it relies on various people keeping their opinions to…
The Spectator’s Notes
How does Vladimir Putin think about the world? It becomes dangerously important to know. I still have not seen a…
Fatal attraction
Recently on holiday I did a very bad thing. I nearly left the Fawn to die on a precipitous mountain…
Bad publicity
Whatever calamitous infelicities David Beckham did or did not email to his publicist, few will doubt that he has lived…
Let’s not dance
Why will people simply not believe you when you tell them that you don’t want to dance? Their reactions mimic…
Corbyn’s blueprint
Twenty years ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world. Now it is one of the poorest.…
Mick Jagger’s lost memoir
Ask any publisher of popular non–fiction anywhere in the world which book they would most like to sign, and it…
Bye bye, Buller
RIP the Bullingdon Club, 1780–2017. It isn’t quite dead — but it is down to its last two members. That’s…
It’s all too personal
When I was little I owned a set of pencils that had my name engraved on them. I didn’t have…
Labour’s love lost
Just as it seems that Labour has reached the bottom of the abyss, Jeremy Corbyn and his party somehow manage…
Picking judges
President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats in the United States are about to engage in political warfare about who will…
The refugee fetish
On February 8, the Australian published a full page advertisement paid for by 72 organisations calling for the evacuation of…
Australian diary
After such a long hot summer it is oddly refreshing to be back in Canberra for the start of the…
The game of life
In the introduction to his new book Steven Johnson starts out by describing the ninth-century Book of Ingenious Devices and…
