Notes on California
The mood in California was apologetic. Most people we met seemed embarrassed that their country’s dirty laundry was being aired…
Enigma variations
On 2 August 1933 one of the more improbable meetings of the 20th century took place when Albert Einstein had…
Child abuse 2.0
I once heard a panelist on Q&A say she’d had an abortion and didn’t ‘give a rat’s arse’ about the…
Australia’s nervous breakdown
A colleague who had recently arrived from the Middle East wondered why it seemed that everybody was on the verge…
Business/Robbery etc
The secretly foreign-funded multinational greenie global-warming activists, who keep losing their vexatious battles in Australian courts, are nevertheless doing worryingly…
Those who designed our Senate would be appalled
If the Senate votes down the same sex marriage plebiscite bill it will amount to one of the most undemocratic…
The Last Enemy, then and now
Going through my library recently I came across a small, rather battered blue book: the 1943 edition of The Last…
Conservative notes
And they wonder why their supporters are deserting them… The whole 18C hate-speech saga is now verging on the pathetic.…
Indonesian notes
The criminalisation of separatism When Indonesian President Joko Widodo visits Australia this coming week, he may be surprised to find…
We won’t shut up
The last few weeks – and the last few editions of The Spectator Australia – have seen a flurry of…
Valda Wilson sings Theodora
Antioch on the Orontes River, founded in late 4th century BC, became an important city in the East of the…
Looking after Leo
I’ve just spent a day looking after our one-year-old vizsla and, to be blunt, I have some sympathy with Michael…
It’s time for Hammond to send a ruthless hit squad into RBS
The new series of The Missing is surely the gloomiest television of the year. But it has nothing on the…
Hell is other people’s dogs
I’ve now just about reached that delightful stage in life where you’re no longer exposed to the horrors of other…
What’s wrong with early voting
Washington The outcome of America’s elections might become clear in the first minutes of vote-counting next Tuesday night. That is…
Ukip is missing an amazing chance
There was a comedy programme about Nigel Farage on the BBC this week, entitled Nigel Farage Gets His Life Back.…
Buried treasure
Wexford is to opera-goers what casinos are to gamblers. The uncertainty, the hope, the exhilaration — they’re all a crucial…
The Spectator’s Notes
It is a great relief that there will be no inquiry into the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ in 1984. The weirdness…
Music matters
There’s nothing new about Radio 3 tearing up the schedules, temporarily abandoning regular favourites such as Private Passions, The Early…
Losing heart
In 2015, the first series of Humans (Sunday) was apparently Channel 4’s most watched home grown drama since The Camomile…
Napoleon dynamite
I shall never forget my first encounter with Abel Gance’s Napoleon. I saw it under the most unpromising circumstances —…
Just kidding
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer is haunted by its own antecedents. Viewers are apt to feel that a new production lacks…
Divinely decadent
‘Oh the Mediterranean addiction, how we fall for it!’ So sighed Sybille Bedford, who spent the 1920s and 1930s in…
Magnetic and repellent
When he first came to public notice, Rasputin was described in a Russian newspaper as ‘a symbol. He is not…
