Portrait of the week
Home The Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that four Syrian refugees living in Calais’ jungle camp could come to…
Thoroughly modern Buffy
Cards on the table. Before I’d published my first novel, or written for newspapers, or won awards for my writing,…
From cosy to crazy
I spent last weekend at Port Eliot in Cornwall, the only summer festival I’d pay to attend. Indeed, I ended…
Heroes in error
In the first year or so of the Iraq occupation — or ‘big Army goatfuck’, as it is not quite…
Sculptures at Barangaroo
The most significant enhancement to Sydney Harbour since the restoration of Walsh Bay, the Barangaroo development is coming into its…
The faceless man in the bowler hat
Surrealism was, at least initially, as much about writing as painting. A plaque on the Hotel des Grands Hommes in…
Gay marriage notes
Is it just me, or is the gay lobby getting painfully tedious? There’s now a near-universal consensus that we should…
Getting away with murder
Cher Hughes loved the beauty, the white sand beaches and sun-kissed climate of the tropical islands of Bocas del Toro…
So even Rudd’s better than a Kiwi?
Anyone who has observed the relationship between Australia and New Zealand over many years is forced to an inescapable conclusion.…
Playing at shepherdesses
Oh, the longueurs of aristocratic Georgian leisure. What on earth did they do all day, with no domestic chores, no…
Battle for Britain
The post Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Glimpses of beauty
Born in Michigan, raised in Lagos and educated in London and New York, Teju Cole is about as cosmopolitan as…
West End churls
Piccadilly is ill-served by cafés, unless you consider House of Caviar a cafe. There is a Caffè Nero by St…
You can run but you can’t hide
In The Circle, Dave Eggers’s satirical dystopia about an insatiable Google-like conglomerate, there’s a scene in which drones hound a…
The Bible is too important to be left to believers
May I write a review of a review? I have to get this out of my system, having been unable…
The Teutonic King Arthur
Hitler, ever seeking to emulate strong German hero types (especially if their Christian name was Frederick), unsurprisingly named his great…
Thank God for Sir Philip Green, the perfect modern hate figure
Good old Sir Philip Green. Where would we be without him? So often, those national hate figures let you down.…
Visions of suburbia
Art is aspiring; hungry; acutely aware of what it could become, and of what it could lack; longs for safety…
High life
Gstaad What is it with these baldies? I turned on the television last week and watched as the identical…
Corn again
The Carer is a Hungarian-British co-production about a cantankerous old thesp (Brian Cox) and the young Hungarian woman (Coco König)…
Cover 6 August 2016
The post Cover 6 August 2016 appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment…
Snakes and ladders
In Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, the ‘exterminating angel’ of the title is a mystery illness. A debilitating virus — much…
Low life
After the death by boredom of the slow traffic jam, the agricultural-show field was an assault on the senses. The…
Beauty and the banal
In 1965 William Eggleston took the first colour photograph that, he felt, really succeeded. The location was outside a supermarket…
Long life
Japanese housewives are so convinced of the value of office work that they get angry if their husbands come home…
