Letters
Democracy or bureaucracy Sir: Professor Garton Ash makes a scholarly appeal for us all to be content with government from…
Australian Letters
Money for nothing Sir: The European Union, in its wisdom, announced last week that it would be granting a further…
Portrait of the week
Home The Bank of England arranged for banks to be able to borrow as much money as they needed around…
God’s messenger
When the Japanese conductor Masaaki Suzuki leads his forces in a performance of a Bach cantata, does he worry that…
The human factor
Anomalisa is an animated film written by Charlie Kaufman, and while the temptation is to label it a midlife crisis…
Pride and prejudice
Jonathan Lynn, co-author of Yes Minister, has excavated the history of France during the two world wars and discovered dramatic…
Pride and prejudice
Jonathan Lynn, co-author of Yes Minister, has excavated the history of France during the two world wars and discovered dramatic…
Girl power
Hurrah for Radio 3 and its (long-overdue) efforts to give us music not just performed by women but composed, and…
Girl power
Hurrah for Radio 3 and its (long-overdue) efforts to give us music not just performed by women but composed, and…
Roman Diary
I love Rome. I love how the old is woven into the new, so the ruins of some dead medieval…
Bridge
Unless you’re an expert, it often pays to keep quiet at the bridge table — something I really ought to…
Best served cold
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Niki Savva book, reviewed this week by Rebecca Weisser as well…
This great commodity rally doesn’t mean that spring has arrived
All in all, this is an odd moment for an outburst of high spirits: not from me — I’m as…
Want to leave the EU? You must be an oik like me
If you need to know how properly posh you are there’s a very simple test: are you pro- or anti-Brexit?…
Osborne can still see off Boris
Listen http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thedeportationgame/media.mp3 When George Osborne last stood up to deliver a budget, he had reached his post-election apotheosis. His economic…
The Spectator’s notes
Surely there is a difference between Mark Carney’s intervention in the Scottish referendum last year and in the EU one…
Just what the doctor ordered
Every now and then, a costume drama comes along that’s so daringly unconventional as to make us re-examine our whole…
Round-up of new opera
A mixed year so far for new opera. A few really dismal things have appeared from people who should know…
Round-up of new opera
A mixed year so far for new opera. A few really dismal things have appeared from people who should know…
The smelly, snobbish death of the public loo
I blame Nancy Mitford: she made the English so frightened of saying ‘toilet’ that now they have hardly any left…
The prying game
Theresa May’s Investigatory Powers Bill makes pitifully little effort to define when heavy surveillance powers may or may not be used
Portrait of the week
Home An official analysis by the Cabinet Office said that if Britain left the EU it would lead to a…
Diary
Tucker Carlson’s diary: The aesthetic merits of British colonialism; Mumbai’s building boom; the ends of empires
Barometer
Also in our Barometer column: the boroughs with the most CCTV cameras, and Britain’s retail and steel industries
People power then and now
Why doesn’t our Prime Minister try the art of persuasion, instead of issuing threats?
