Bridge
It’s so hard not to whinge when you’ve had bad luck at bridge — it’s just one of those things…
Jumping ship
Talk of Cory Bernardi’s ‘betrayal’, or of him ‘ratting out’ on his colleagues, is disingenuous twaddle at best. As we…
Jumping ship
Talk of Cory Bernardi’s ‘betrayal’, or of him ‘ratting out’ on his colleagues, is disingenuous twaddle at best. As we…
In this digital age, should we worry about bank branch closures? Yes we should
Almost a decade after the financial crisis loomed, our high streets and town centres are full of life again: who…
Righter of wrongs
I used to work for Ludo, as we all knew him on BBC2’s Did You See?, and was once thought…
Cheating death
2016 was probably the year even the most optimistic of us — those who can genuinely square the new populist…
Flights of fancy
Michael Chabon’s back. He’d never gone away, of course — more than a dozen books in all — but it’s…
Thirtysomething blues
If ever there was a book for our uncaring, unsharing times, it is Gwendoline Riley’s First Love, in which Neve,…
Recent crime fiction
There isn’t a clear line separating crime and literary fiction, but a border zone where ideas are passed from one…
Bad behaviour
Molly Keane achieved fame and critical acclaim in 1981 aged 75, when she published the novel Good Behaviour, a razor-sharp…
A diamond set in sapphires
I was a young, aspiring writer when I decided to leave everything behind and move to Istanbul more than two…
Intimations of mortality
In Deaths of the Poets two living examples of the species, Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, retail the closing…
The Baron is back
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had his Polish ancestor not been exiled to…
My poor Boy. He’s going to end up just like me
Boy is planning his gap year. Every few hours he rings from school to give me a progress report. ‘I’m…
Why wouldn’t our NHS saints help a dying man?
We all think pretty highly of ourselves these days, free from old-fashioned ideas about sin. We’re good people. And yet……
Theresa May’s racing certainty
There are few things more predictable than people talking about the unpredictability of politics. We live in an age, we…
The Spectator’s Notes
As we have been reminded this week, the most famous words (apart from ‘Order, order’) ever uttered by a Speaker…
Impaired vision
With the Shannon Matthews story, it’s not easy to accentuate the positive — but BBC1’s The Moorside (Tuesday) is having…
In praise of pink Lego
There aren’t many toy companies that could make headlines in the business press merely by expanding their London offices —…
Who will be London’s next bishop?
In typical theatrical style, the outgoing Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, he of the sonorous voice and imposing beard, ‘never…
Rides without romance
You know the old designation NSIT — Not Safe in Taxis? Well, we need a new one: TSIU — Too…
A choice of revolutions
Is France on the brink of a political revolution? Already, four established candidates for the presidency — two former presidents…
Trump fever
Throughout John Bercow’s political career he has felt the need to atone for his student days when he was a…
Business/Robbery etc
At last a rational solution to Australia’s government-generated economically-crazy job-destroying energy crisis? Or just more pie in the sky from…
Brown study
Until a few days ago I was planning to start this column with: ‘Have you noticed how the heat has…
