Dear Mary
Q. Our first Christmas card arrived on 2 December and it was a lovely thing — a Burne-Jones angel musician,…
Game of the year
Probably the most spectacular game played in the past year was the brilliant win by Gawain Jones in the Olympiad.…
no.437
White to play and win. This is a position from Caruana-Kramnik, Leuven 2016. Answers to me at The Spectator by…
Empty words
In Competition No. 2977 you were invited to submit a selection of meaningless, pseudo-profound statements. Bullshit was defined in a…
Dear Mary
Q. Our first Christmas card arrived on 2 December and it was a lovely thing — a Burne-Jones angel musician,…
Harry, Jeffrey and Benoit
I first ate at the London version of Harry’s Bar in the early 1990s. Back then, Jeffrey Archer and I…
Keep the press free
It is said that the case for freedom of expression needs to be restated in every generation, but things move…
High life
What a great year this has been, what a good mood I’m in, why, it’s almost like being in love.…
Long life
New Year’s Day is the most depressing of holidays. It doesn’t celebrate anyone or anything worth celebrating. It simply marks…
Long life
New Year’s Day is the most depressing of holidays. It doesn’t celebrate anyone or anything worth celebrating. It simply marks…
Low life
I drew back the curtains. Yet another absolutely still, sunny day. Early-morning mist lying in the valleys. An echoing report…
Low life
I drew back the curtains. Yet another absolutely still, sunny day. Early-morning mist lying in the valleys. An echoing report…
Uh-oh
Here are the first 50 words in the order that they were learnt by a child called Will: 1 uh-oh;…
Real life
What a fraught, divisive, infuriating sort of year it’s been. It started with me attempting to go on a blind…
Do I hang myself out to dry again?
And so it begins again. This time last year, I decided to see how long I could last without alcohol.…
Do I hang myself out to dry again?
And so it begins again. This time last year, I decided to see how long I could last without alcohol.…
Keep death off the roads with an app
Controversial I know, but I feel a little sympathy for Tomasz Kroker, the lorry driver jailed for ten years for…
Ovid’s post-truths
We are told we live in a ‘post-truth’ world. This appears to mean that everyone believes everything they are told…
Barometer
Supremely exciting The nation awaits with bated breath the decision of the Supreme Court on whether the government can exercise…
Diary
Every year, from mid-November to mid-January, dozens of DVDs drop through my letterbox. These are most of the movie releases…
These little islands
From ‘Engage the enemy more closely!’, The Spectator, 30 December 1916: Britain was never more vigorous than she is now:…
Letters
Unencumbered Sir: Matthew Parris’s bizarre reference (‘Unforgiven’, 10 December) to the UK economy as merely ‘medium-sized’ is a classic instance…
Portrait of the Week
Home The Queen was said by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg to have asked, at a private lunch before June’s referendum,…
Aux bien pensants
Long before Trump & Brexit… President Trump’s landslide is just the beginning. Better than the sight of battalions of experts…
