Brown study
The FBI certainly stirred up the US election when it announced it had found more of Hillary Clinton’s emails on…
The Battle for Britain
The post The Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment…
Ode worthy
In Competition No. 2972 you were invited to supply an ode on a Grayson Perry urn. Frank McDonald wasn’t keen:…
to 2282: Timely
The perimetric quotation (referring to October), AMBIGUOUS MONTH, THE MONTH OF TENSION, THE UNENDURABLE MONTH’, is followed by DL, the initials…
Dear Mary
Q. Some elderly friends of mine love to entertain in their London club on their visits, but a problem arises…
High life
Sixty years ago this week all hell broke loose: Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest and put down a nationalist uprising…
Long life
For almost 400 years, since it was built on the orders of Pope Urban VIII in the 17th century, the…
Star-spangled banter
This weekend at the Edenbridge bonfire in Kent, near where I live, an effigy of Donald Trump will be burned.…
A tale of two battles
For the past few weeks, British news-papers have been informing their readers about two contrasting battles in the killing grounds…
Bordering on insanity
There are lots of signs at Gatwick about how it is unacceptable to be ‘rude or abusive’ to Border Force…
Vicar, can you spare a dime?
‘I am a Messianic Jew,’ says the jittery young man at the rectory door. He is pale and drawn, with…
Take a letter
Enrolling at Parsons College in New York the other day, a friend was asked to state her name, subject and…
Home to roost
‘Prefabs to solve housing crisis,’ screamed the front page of the Sunday Telegraph last weekend. Can the shortage of homes…
Breaking the Bank
The exchange of letters this week between Mark Carney and Philip Hammond made it very clear who the supplicant was.…
Low life
‘Look at them, they’re all fat,’ he said. I’d slowed the car to allow four children to cross the zebra…
Post-Brexit
Staring at a brown envelope, my husband said: ‘I’ll deal with that post-breakfast,’ and then laughed as though he had…
How to carry less baggage
One fairly reliable rule of thumb is ‘never buy anything at an airport if you can help it’. Something about…
Hippocrates’ prescription
Doctors are being urged not to tell patients what is best for them but to lay out the options and…
Diary
Polite, well-heeled New Hampshire is the last place you’d expect to see a voodoo doll. But there it was, pointed…
Bridge
My ten-year-old football-loving son thought I was making some silly joke when I told him last weekend that I was…
no. 433
Black to play. This position is from Nakamura-Carlsen, chess.com Blitz Final 2016. The position looks quiet but after Black’s next…
2285: Characterful
Unclued lights are three groups of three words of a kind, each group relating differently to a theme word. This…
From Bordeaux to Nato
An aeon ago, when I was first invited to the odd City lunch, there was a standard formula: G&T, white,…
In praise of hurt feelings
In the keynote address at the Brisbane Writer’s Festival in September, the novelist Lionel Shriver took aim at some of…
