How the Spartans got fighting fit
Donald Trump has brought back the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, once used in state schools to gauge young…
The tragic decline of children’s literature
The other day, leafing through T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which enchanted me as a child, I was…
Haircuts are a human right!
During the immigration deluge in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems one Afghan and one Indian national…
Progress is destroying the planet: the rants of a self-hating American
Poverty is increasing and freedom contracting, says Samuel Miller McDonald – and exploitative white Americans, from Abraham Lincoln onwards, are largely to blame
Giorgia Meloni’s Italian renaissance
Rome Last weekend, Rome hosted nearly a million young pilgrims to celebrate the Papal Jubilee of Youth. Part Woodstock festival,…
A precocious protagonist: Vera, or Faith, by Gary Shteyngart, reviewed
No wonder clever ten-year old Vera is suffering intense anxiety in Manhattan, what with problems at school, her birth mother vanishing and the wider American world in turmoil
The Catholic influencers spreading the word of God
Vatican City In an auditorium just outside St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sat solemnly…
Rattigan’s films are as important as his plays
A campaign is under way to rename the West End’s Duchess Theatre after the playwright Terence Rattigan. Supported as it…
Deluded Americans are descending on Ireland
The American girl was listing her reasons for moving to Ireland in protest at Donald Trump. ‘I cannot stay in…
The excruciating tedium of John Tavener
The Edinburgh International Festival opened with John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple, and I wish it hadn’t. Not that…
A mafia drama like no other
The Kingdom is a mafia drama like no other. It’s directed by Julien Colonna whose father was a Corsican mob…
The glorious richness of rillettes
I admit to feeling a little intimidated by charcuterie. I have a clutch of books on my shelf all laying…
Worth watching for Momoa’s gibbous-moon buttocks alone
If you enjoyed Apocalypto – that long but exciting Mel Gibson movie about natives being chased through the jungle with…
My clandestine night at the theatre
Kenya The poster for the Edinburgh University Shakespeare Company’s production of Much Ado About Nothing had a hippie design, with…
Spectator Competition: Popular demand
For Comp. 3411 you were invited to submit a passage or poem on the subject of dynamic pricing. Thanks to…
The return of Russiagate
In June, Tulsi Gabbard found herself in a difficult position. As a dovish Iraq war veteran who happens to be…
