The Easter rising
From ‘The Dublin Revolt’, The Spectator, 29 April 1916: If we are to do what will most disappoint the Germans, and that…
Elections? What elections?
The EU referendum hogs all the attention, but what happens in Scotland, Wales and London has real political significance
The Spectator’s Notes
Also in The Spectator’s Notes: the FT’s nervous condition; the Mail’s Eurosceptic rage; Englishness; hairbrushes
Brexit Tories are feeling disrespected. How awful
They seem to think that the Prime Minister should be some kind of neutral observer in the debate
The politically correct way to do racism
Lefties will grab at anything in order to corral it into their own absolutist little pen
The death of investment banking will lead to the rebirth of something better
Also in Any Other Business: the meaning of the BHS bust, what’s happening at Hinkley Point, and friends on the Rich List
Cotton Belt Notebook
Clarksdale, Mississippi, where Highway 61 crosses 49 and Robert Johnson met the Devil, who taught him the secret of the…
Acid trip
A paper review suggests many studies are flawed, and the effect may not be negative even if it’s real
The spaces in between
Our fascination with canvases that have been abandoned or deliberately left ‘painterly’ should not blind us to the beauty of the finished work, says Philip Hensher
The mother of all crimes
Kate Summerscale rediscovers a sensational case of juvenile matricide in Victorian London — and an adult life spent making atonement
Reading the waves
Tristan Gooley learns to read all kinds of ripples and undercurrents, while Jack Cooke explores London’s vast leafy canopy
Inside of a dog
Raymond and Laura Coppinger remind us that most nations simply can’t afford to be as sentimental about dogs as the British
‘Mother says I look like a sick ostrich’
Alexander Masters transforms some anonymous diaries found discarded on a skip into a volume worthy of Laurence Sterne
Reclaiming Nietzsche
A lacklustre new biography does at least help rescue Nietzsche’s reputation from the pernicious meddling of his anti-Semitic sister
Mao devours his foes
Cannibalism is added to Maoism’s many other crimes in Frank Dikötter’s final searing volume of A People’s History
Broken and mad
British high command’s fear that shell shock would become an ‘epidemic’ resulted in the barbarous treatment of hundreds of sufferers in the first world war
The death of the author
Jenny Diski, now terminally ill with cancer, longs ‘to die easily’ — in contrast to her former complicated life, vividly portrayed in her challenging memoir
The horse from hell
C.E. Morgan’s vivid epic of rage and racism on a Kentucky stud farm exposes the myth of the American dream
Filming the Final Solution
Amid the abundant cinema of Nazi atrocity, the Oscar-winning Son of Saul is exemplary. Ian Thomson explains why
