The Band’s Barnacle Man
The recent spate of rock memoirs has proved one of the less rewarding sub- genres in the post-digital Gutenberg galaxy.…
Bridges and troubled waters
During David Cameron’s years as prime minister, an unobtrusive figure could be seen slipping out of the back entrance to…
Thoughts on the human condition
This past autumn has felt more uncomfortable than usual to be a woman looking at men looking at women. From…
Wild, wild women
Who is the least likely candidate for an animated princess movie? That’s the question former DreamWorks animator Jason Porath asked…
Embarrassing Victorian bodies
The fetishisation of the Victorians shows no sign of abating. Over the past 16 years, since the centenary of the…
A matter of life and death
This month, 30 years ago, I wrote a draft of what was to become soon afterwards the first comprehensive human…
A cold case from the Cold War
It is a chastening thought that Boris Johnson’s responsibilities now include MI6. Alan Judd’s latest novel is particularly interesting about…
An apologia for adultery
What to make of this unexpectedly startling novel? Though you may be lured into a false sense of familiarity by…
Piety and wit
During the second world war, while one brother was editing Punch as a national institution (‘Working with him was a…
The legacy of Vietnam
At first glance, Robert Olen Butler’s Perfume River seems like an application for a National Book Award. Its protagonist, Robert,…
A hellish paradise
‘Short of writing a thesis in many volumes,’ Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote in his preface to The Traveller’s Tree, ‘only…
The trapper and the trapped
The Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai has only lately become known to Anglophone audiences, through the masterly translations of George Szirtes…
Look back in anger
Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger wants to explain how we got to a world in ‘a pervasive panic… that anything…
As the rich get richer and Trump takes power, Davos Man should be very afraid
I’ve objected before to the fact that supporters of Oxfam shops are unknowingly funding not only an aid charity but…
Piers Morgan is a shameless brown-noser. But maybe he’s on the right track
A few weeks ago I was having an argument with Piers Morgan on Twitter. Oh God, is that really how…
What really drives us in the big game of life?
When were you last in a game reserve? Perhaps most Spectator readers will be familiar with the experience and if…
May has taken back control
‘No negotiation without notification’ has been the EU’s mantra since 24 June last year. Its leaders have been determined that…
Stupidity takes hold of another students’ union
I had never heard the acronym Soas before I started work at the BBC, almost 30 years ago. But as…
The Spectator’s Notes
It is hard to be shocked by anything in these tumultuous times, but I was brought up short by the…
The love Labour’s losing
Stoke-on-Trent is an unsettled place, figuratively and literally. The ground under the city is riddled with shafts from coal and…
The plots against Trump
The ‘most deadly adversaries of republican government,’ wrote Alexander Hamilton, arise ‘chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain…
How did you kill that hat?
The well-dressed lady turned the fur collar over in her hands and fixed me with a withering stare. ‘Is this…
Monumental folly
The astonishing has happened at Stonehenge. Some prehistoric force has driven ministers to make a decision. It is to spend…
Killer plots
We all love to mock Bond villains for their hilarious ineptitude at killing the hero. The ‘genius’ Dr No has a…
Flight into Israel
I’ve always lived in London. I grew up near Baker Street and went to school in Camden. Even when I…
