There will be blood
Lucia di Lammermoor is one of the two or three Donizetti operas that have never fallen out of the repertoire,…
Death watch
All this week Radio Five Live has been giving us an insight into what it is like not just to…
Death watch
All this week Radio Five Live has been giving us an insight into what it is like not just to…
Diary
On arrival in Sydney for a stint with the Centre for Independent Studies, I am ensconced in the bourgeois bohemia…
Bridge
Can there be a game more humiliating than Bridge? Last weekend the boys and I went to Warsaw to play…
Walk the plank
It’s sad to say but the Royal Australian Navy is fast becoming a joke, if it isn’t there already. The…
Let’s refocus the Panama story on the bad stuff that really matters
There were moments last week when I was ready to give up journalism and retrain in a less unsavoury profession…
Cameron and Mugabe: spot the difference
It is not what Robert Mugabe would do. Calm down. These are ‘spiv Robert Mugabe antics’, said the Tory backbencher…
The wisdom of pitchfork-wielding crowds
In a way the headline to my fellow columnist Dominic Lawson’s Sunday Times commentary on 12 April said it all.…
Cameron’s plan for a graceful exit all hinges on the referendum
The year 2019 seems a long way away. Whether or not David Cameron can stay in office until then is…
The Spectator’s notes
I don’t think there is a Royal College of Public Relations, but if there were, it should teach a course…
An inconvenient truth
‘Our findings will shock many people,’ promised Trevor Phillips at the beginning of What British Muslims Really Think (Channel 4,…
Portrait of the week
Home Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, said that the government would like a buyer to save Port Talbot steelworks. ‘We’re…
Diary
Also in Virginia Ironside’s diary: why Putin’s facelift is so obvious; camouflage; saving a park; when to visit the doctor
Zeppelin raids
From ‘Per Mare, Per Terras, Per Coelum’, The Spectator, 8 April 1916: The very worst the Germans can do in the way…
Do the Tories want to lose London?
But victory for Sadiq Khan in the mayoral election could gift the Tories more years of abysmal opposition from Jeremy Corbyn.
The Spectator’s notes
Also in The Spectator’s Notes: sheep; the smell of spring; my nephew’s art; FGM
Whoever invented referendums needs a kicking
They are not ‘democracy at work’ — they are a recourse for tyrants
Give thanks for the tomb raiders
Without them, many of the artefacts now demanded back from museums simply wouldn’t have survived
Credit where it’s due to Tata, our greatest inward investor
Also in Any Other Business: the balance of payments; and a new job for Mossack Fonseca
Letting terror win
Can you believe that after the Brussels attacks the BBC took us on a tour of vulnerable London Tube stations?
Robocop returns
There are far fewer ‘elite’ armed officers than we think... but their methods are creeping into everyday policing
