Cicero on regulating MPs
How the ancients dealt with the age-old question of ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’
Flying start
From ‘Common-sense and the command of the air’, The Spectator, 25 March 1916: The Air Service will be the great fighting…
Spectator’s Notes
Also in The Spectator’s Notes: the last of Operation Midland, Labour anti-Semitism, Obama in Cuba, and hot-cross buns
The scan said my baby wouldn’t live. It was wrong
A callous sonographer who treated guidelines as facts left me and my husband in mistaken mourning
What will I do with my second chance at life? Play more video games, for a start
After my pulmonary embolism I’m watching trash TV with my son, spending hours on the Xbox... and reading The Iliad
My straw polls say the ‘leave’ campaign is failing to make a clear economic case
The ‘leave’ lobby has the best tunes but fails to make a clear economic case
The Conservative crack-up
Months after a historic election victory, party unity is in pieces. What can David Cameron do about it?
The price of a cathedral
Entrance fees? Fashion shows? Corporate dinners? These days, nothing is ruled out
Feedback frenzy
It used to be fun telling companies what you thought of them before they insisted on it all the time
Feminists for Brexit
You only have to listen to the patronising, gaslighting ‘in’ campaign to know why
Oh, what a lovely Waugh!
My father enjoyed playing up to his misanthropic reputation. But its consequences now are beyond a joke
St Petersburg
Book your holiday for May or June, when the light-hearted locals are emerging from winter hibernation
‘Help the British anyhow’
Srinath Raghavan shows how fighting with the Allies in the second world war would profoundly affect India’s future, for better or worse
Sick transit
Caroline Jones records in gut-wrenching detail the organised chaos of her 14-year battle with bulimia
Going global
Ben Wilson’s Heyday describes many thrilling advances in world communication and travel — and fortunes made and lost in the gold rush
Tainted love
Barney Hoskyns describes how Bob Dylan’s ‘greatest place’ in the early Sixties soon became one big chaotic nightmare
A mix of myths
Deborah Levy’s novel, set in contemporary Spain, is rich in mythological allusions — especially to the Gorgon Medusa
Disgusted of X-ville
Despite its drab prison setting and lonely, dysmorphic heroine, this creepily funny first novel shows immense promise, says Lewis Jones
Sexy self-advertising
Frances Borzello argues that the best way for female artists to advertise their skills was to paint self-portraits
Murder most foul
Alexander Litvinenko’s gruesome poisoning in 2006 continues to pose many disturbing questions — not least over Britain’s cynical attitude to justice
Diced heart and a full-bodied red
Ghosts of the past haunt Commissario Soneri in this sinister story of bribery and murder in fog-bound Parma
