Country music
In Competition No. 2936 you were invited to propose lyrics for a new British national anthem. Tom Shakespeare recently suggested…
Your problems solved
Q. Former colleagues, with whom I got on very well in the context of the office, are buying a house…
The grim irony of Walsingham
As you came from the Holy land Of Walsingham Met you not with my true love By the way as…
Driven to extremes
Imagine if Nigel Farage declared that police should be ready to shoot migrants trying to make it from Calais to…
High life
One reason I do not tweet, text, use Facebook or Instagram, and only wield a mobile when a landline is…
Long life
There are still four months to go before the vote, but I already feel quite exhausted by the Europe referendum…
Long life
There are still four months to go before the vote, but I already feel quite exhausted by the Europe referendum…
Low life
I was diagnosed with prostate cancer with metastases in April 2013. It was a bit of a shock, but when…
Low life
I was diagnosed with prostate cancer with metastases in April 2013. It was a bit of a shock, but when…
Special status
‘Special status?’ said my husband. ‘You mean like executioners, butchers and undertakers in Japan?’ I hadn’t suggested that, but had…
Real life
The last time I bought a set of tyres in south London I came away not quite knowing whether I…
Vote ‘leave’ and stop the blurring of Britain
I don’t remember the last European referendum being nearly as dramatic as the current one. In 1975, we were being…
Vote ‘leave’ and stop the blurring of Britain
I don’t remember the last European referendum being nearly as dramatic as the current one. In 1975, we were being…
The 5 per cent of people who get to decide everything
What happens when 95 per cent of people like something, but 5 per cent of people prefer something else? You might think…
Seneca on bouncers
The papers are full of top stories about important people who cannot get into important parties because the doorman does…
Barometer
Vote no, vote often David Cameron scorned Boris Johnson’s idea that voting to leave the EU might result in further…
Diary
The Prime Minister is pretty angry with Boris. But the idea that they’ve competed with each other since school is…
What we’re fighting for
From ‘Justice and Security’, The Spectator, 26 February 1916: If the conditions upon which we are willing to make peace…
Letters
In defence of the heads Sir: It is fair for Ysenda Maxtone Graham to criticise heads who garner publicity but…
Australian letters
Maaaate Sir: The most remarkable feature of Scott Morrison’s address to the National Press Club last week was that he…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, having continued talks through the night in Brussels, announced that he had achieved a ‘special status’ for…
Dying of the light
Finding St Peter’s is not straightforward. I approach the wrong way, driving up a pot-holed farm track between a golf…
Sweet and sour
Dear, good, kind, sacrificing Little Nell. Here she is kneeling by a wayside pond, bonnet pushed back, shoes and stockings…
On the trail of Piero
Piero della Francesca is today acknowledged as one of the foundational artists of the Renaissance. Aldous Huxley thought his ‘Resurrection’…
You’ve been framed
‘I like ordinary people,’ says the extraordinary photographer Martin Parr, pushing a few high-concept smoked sprats around his plate at…
