Condemning – – – – –
Littering our beautiful countryside is both unsightly and potentially prejudicial to the environment. So we run expensive campaigns to condemn…
Conservative notes
Yet another reason to keep the Crown: as part of her 90th birthday honors list, the Queen knighted Roger Scruton.…
Bridge
Just take the money! That’s the philosophy of many rubber bridge players when it comes to bidding — or rather…
Green with envy
I’ve been dudded. This is what happens when you elect, then re-elect, a Greens MP. When your electorate goes from…
Gatton Park
Gatton Park is probably Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s least famous landscape. It is tucked away near Reigate Hill, just beyond the…
Leningrad Lip
I had intended this week to write about the surprise surge by Mamedyarov which overturned all expectations in the elite…
No. 413
White to play. This is from Korchnoi-Karpov, Candidates Final, Moscow 1974. White’s next move destroyed the black position and led…
Nonsensical
In Competition No. 2952 you were invited to submit nonsense verse of up to 16 lines on the subject of…
Your problems solved
Q. My daughters and I were recently taking our seats on an aeroplane. From behind us came the recorded refrain…
Gossip from the top table
In the 1970s, when there were many fewer restaurants in London, Locket’s was much the best place to eat around…
Out – and into the world
The Spectator has a long record of being isolated, but right. We supported the north against the slave-owning south…
High life
Marion, Baroness Lambert, was hit and killed by a London bus last month while shopping in Oxford Street, a cruel…
Long life
It was 41 years ago that The Spectator first urged its readers to vote Brexit in a referendum, but the…
Long life
It was 41 years ago that The Spectator first urged its readers to vote Brexit in a referendum, but the…
Low life
Michel is one of those Frenchmen one encounters now and again whose shining saintliness is beyond rational understanding. This great…
Low life
Michel is one of those Frenchmen one encounters now and again whose shining saintliness is beyond rational understanding. This great…
Little England
In the art of insult, the sting lies in the adjective, no matter how derogatory the noun. So it is…
Real life
‘This EU passport is an outrage. I want a British one!’ Not my words, Cydney’s. The spaniel is coming round…
Who’s sabotaging my Leave campaign?
I’ve never been a great believer in karma. After all, in the absence of some kind of cosmic enforcer of…
Who’s sabotaging my Leave campaign?
I’ve never been a great believer in karma. After all, in the absence of some kind of cosmic enforcer of…
The cultural hodgepodge that is Europe
If Geert Hofstede’s name is familiar to you, it might be from pop-science articles explaining a spate of Korean airliner…
Plato on the EU referendum
Our politicians, realising that the referendum campaign will be settled not by themselves under the usual parliamentary constraints but by…
