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?
The last of Henry James
From ‘Henry James’, The Spectator, 4 March 1916: Englishmen are not likely ever to forget the generous thought which inspired…
Will Cameron pull his punches to help the Tories reunite?
After the opening skirmishes the ‘inners’ are winning on the economy and the ‘outers’ on immigration
The Spectator’s notes
Also in The Spectator’s Notes: the significance of 23 June; why ‘leave’ can’t have a plan; The Simpsons and President Trump
What do all these evil maniacs have in common?
If it’s Islam, you can count on the BBC and the Guardian not to mention it
Are we ready for virtual-reality news?
All reports edit. Virtual-reality reporting may make that harder to remember
Of course the old Tory hatreds are back. That’s referendums for you
They have never really been on the same side, the two types of Tories. They have merely rubbed along
Better that the Americans take over the London Stock Exchange
Plus: Central bankers can’t go on like this; and why Barclays should stay in Africa
A conservative case for staying in
The Brexit camp want to risk decades of real peace and prosperity to attain a future full of implausibly rational statesmen
Of geese and men
The history of human-goose relationships shows how confused we are about our fellow animals
Who steals books?
In some places, it’s the Ottolenghis that have to be kept behind the counter. In others, it’s the true crime
Communism kills
We, unlike the Hungarians, are in danger of forgetting this ideology’s extraordinary death toll
Courchevel
The last time I stayed in Courchevel it was in a tatty roadside chalet a long way down the mountain.…
‘Excess is obnoxious’
Aleppo’s magnificent history as an ancient Silk Road metropolis makes Philip Mansel’s final bleak chapter, ‘Death of a City’, especially tragic reading
A disarming heroine
This big, colourful novel, written by a film critic and set in Fifties bohemian London, is as addictive as a TV box set
Putting the sun in the shade
Timothy J. Jorgensen’s Strange Glow contains some really quite interesting facts about this strange transmission of energy that can both kill and cure
Purifying the gymnasium
But that's partly because we still don't have good answers to the questions he raised