Low life
On the Monday before Christmas, the black dog came around again and I couldn’t get out of bed. I lay…
Low life
On the Monday before Christmas, the black dog came around again and I couldn’t get out of bed. I lay…
Americanisms
Here are eight invasive Americanisms to continue annoying us in 2017. Running for office. Liz Kendall was ‘running for the…
Real life
The most annoying thing about starting a new year is how long it takes for everyone to crank themselves back…
Unimpressed by the Root cause
Those who occupy them sometimes say that the only two jobs that matter in England are Chief of the Defence…
Why meritocrats are the new aristocrats
After Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan completed their report on civil service reform in 1854, in which they…
Why meritocrats are the new aristocrats
After Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan completed their report on civil service reform in 1854, in which they…
The turf
The biggest oohs and aahs on the entertainment scene this winter were nothing to do with the ‘He’s behind you…
The turf
The biggest oohs and aahs on the entertainment scene this winter were nothing to do with the ‘He’s behind you…
From Socrates to Osborne
Ex-chancellor George Osborne is planning a book to be titled The Age of Unreason. He says that ‘it will be…
Barometer
Village people The government announced plans for 14 ‘garden villages’. The concept of a garden city or village is attributed…
Diary
On New Year’s Day I went for a swim off Broad Haven beach in Pembrokeshire. The water was 10.3ºC: pretty…
A killing to celebrate
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 6 January 1917: The war has been crowded with romantic adventures by sea…
Letters
Yet another kind of snob Sir: May I offer another definition of a ‘snob’ to the one described by Bryan…
Letters
Meatloaf monarchy Sir: I realize that sending pro-republic letters to the Spectator Australia is akin to sending meatloaf recipes to…
Portrait of the week
Home Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, resigned; he had been expected to play an important part in…
Playing with holy fire
In the nearly four years since he was elected, Pope Francis I has achieved the singular distinction of bringing the…
Attack of the Offendotrons
It’s impossible to ignore the story of Greig Tonkins, the Taronga Park zookeeper who punched a giant roo to save…
Obama’s Legacy
Mark Steyn, in After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, branded Barack Obama a ‘symptom rather than a problem’. Steyn compared…
Munchkins and mischiefs
Arthur Rackham shouldn’t have lived in anything as conventional as a house. It should have been a gingerbread cottage, like…
Long suffering
Silence is Martin Scorsese’s film about Jesuit priests in 17th-century Japan whose faith is sorely tested, just as your patience…
Ways of seeing
‘Radical’ is like ‘creative’, a word that has been enfeebled to the point of meaninglessness. Everybody seems to want to…
Hedda Garbler
Hedda Gabler is one of the most influential plays ever written. It not merely illuminated an injustice, the enslavement of…
Hedda Garbler
Hedda Gabler is one of the most influential plays ever written. It not merely illuminated an injustice, the enslavement of…
Giving it both barrels
In Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March, the ageing Emperor Franz Joseph regrets the drab field-grey that has replaced his army’s…
