Black magic
Ballet’s romantic mantra could be summed up by John Keats’s ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, in which a young…
Old masters
The Fitzwilliam Museum is marking its bicentenary with an exhibition that takes its title from Agatha Christie: Death on the…
Funny boys
Sir Ken’s excellent West End residency continues with a sugar-rich confection. Sean Foley has adapted and updated an elderly French farce…
Funny boys
Sir Ken’s excellent West End residency continues with a sugar-rich confection. Sean Foley has adapted and updated an elderly French farce…
The kids are all right
In a remote fishing village a lone figure confronts an unexplained death, standing tormented but unbroken against fate, the community…
The kids are all right
In a remote fishing village a lone figure confronts an unexplained death, standing tormented but unbroken against fate, the community…
Crossing continents
Could radio, and in particular a weekly soap, have a role to play in the Syrian crisis? You might think,…
Crossing continents
Could radio, and in particular a weekly soap, have a role to play in the Syrian crisis? You might think,…
New kid’s diary
One of the advantages of filling a casual vacancy in the Senate is the short lead time between being chosen…
Consider this
Unrelenting school lobby ‘Needs based [school] funding is used as a proxy for arguments for more funding.’ Indeed it…
Consider this
Unrelenting school lobby ‘Needs based [school] funding is used as a proxy for arguments for more funding.’ Indeed it…
Bridge
Tom Townsend, my esteemed teammate and the Telegraph’s bridge correspondent, did the double last weekend at the London Easter Festival…
Surplus, not surprises
Unless the Senate does something spectacular – and God knows it likes to make a spectacle of itself – the…
Osborne’s on the back foot but his Living Wage deserves praise
It was unfashionable of me to write in praise of George Osborne on Budget day. I did so, you may…
I have seen the future, and it’s a racist, filthy-mouthed teenage robot
‘I’m a nice person,’ said the robot. ‘I just hate everybody.’ Maybe you know the feeling. The robot in question…
The winged rabbit who made me a Tory
His father’s dental cast, writes Graham Greene near the beginning of The Power and the Glory ‘had been [Trench’s] favourite…
Can anyone stop Boris?
Most MPs greet the parliamentary recess with a sense of relief. But Conservatives are welcoming this Easter break like the…
The Spectator’s Notes
You might expect that the murder of Christians would excite particular horror in countries of Christian heritage. Yet almost the…
Love at first sight
Now the kids are back for the school holidays, I have a licence to watch complete trash again. No more…
Diary
I’d like this to have been one of those Spectator diaries that gives the ordinary reader a glimpse into the…
Australian notes
The New Atheists – clever, uncompromising, polite – seized the initiative only a few years ago, at least in publishing.…
Why I feel compelled to defend Boris
I got Boris Johnson into trouble once, without meaning to. The two of us had been driven hither and thither…
The jihad continues
Tuesday’s explosions in Belgium soon after the arrest of Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam show the Islamists’ ability to act quickly
Portrait of the week
Home Iain Duncan Smith resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary two days after the Budget, throwing the government into a…
Diary
Ben Schott has an app for that. Also in his diary: first-class stance, tiponomics, and the Independent’s photographic golden age
