Old-fashioned values
Bookmaking’s image has changed. Alongside the arrival of the betting exchanges, the evolution of the big names like Hills, Coral,…
The bitchy world of ballet
Memoirs of old men, baldly, tend to be tricky. Sir Peter Wright, one of the founding pillars of the British…
Queen’s Gambit rejected
One of the most reliable methods of frustrating chess computers is to play 1 d4 but then avoid the well-trodden…
In the gutter, insulting the stars
John McEntee — ‘the Chancer from Cavan’, as he bills himself — has enjoyed a long career as a gossip…
North and South
In Competition No. 2963 you were invited to submit a poem about the North or the South or one comparing…
Listen with Mother
Ian McEwan’s novels are drawn to enclosed spaces. There is the squash court upon which the surgeon plays a meticulously…
to 2273: Numbers
Round the perimeter run the titles of three songs from the musical Guys and Dolls, epitomised by SKY (28) Masterson…
Revolution was in the air
The Penguin History of Europe reaches its seventh volume (out of nine) with Richard J. Evans’s thorough and wide-ranging work…
The Battle for Britain
The post The Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment…
Murky subjects, misty settings
A short-story renaissance has been promised since 2013. That year Alice Munro won the Nobel, Lydia Davis won the Booker…
Dear Mary
Q. We have a heavenly house in Corfu where we go as often as possible. The best thing about it…
A masterpiece of mesmerising beauty
In the beginning was Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, pleached and Proustian, released in February 1960. This was followed soon after,…
Taxi
Old Quentin Letts was on the wireless the other day asking ‘What’s the point of the London black cab?’ Between…
Grubby, funny shaggy dog story
The Mexican author Juan Pablo Villa-lobos’s first short novel, Down the Rabbit Hole (Fiesta en la madriguera), was published in…
Australian letters
Gender fluid Sir: I wonder if the authors of ‘Dr.James Barry’ got their inspiration from the 1999 publication by Isabel…
One scorching summer long ago
It was the brightest of futures; it was the End of Days. Three hundred and fifty years before Brexit, England…
Imaginary villains
There are many similarities between the way the Left, in all their wisdom and touchy-feely clear-sightedness, react both to the…
The don’ts of ‘parenting’
In the American way, the child psychologist Alison Gopnik’s new book has an attractive sound-bitey title dragging a flat-footed subtitle…
Time to sign up for free speech
The sorry state of free speech in this country appears to concern a lot of people in this country. The…
Wet dream
Utopia dons some unlikely guises, crops up in some odd places. On the sea wall a couple in their teens…
Fall of a political pin-up
After NSW Premier Mike Baird, with his Greens and neo-Marxist allies rammed through a ban on greyhound racing, ‘Kim Il…
All the way to Memphis
The bad news for old rock’n’rollers is that there’s not much time left to stay at Heartbreak Hotel — these…
Mental mollycoddling
It was recently exposed in News Limited newspapers that as many as one in three students in some elite high…
Pussy galore
I think I might be turning into Alf Garnett. When I was growing up I saw him as an obnoxious,…
Maxim Vengerov
Sir Andrew Davis, chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, described its recently announced 2017 season as ‘a marvellous feast…
