Being and nothingness
Florian Zeller has been reading Pinter. And Pinter started out in repertory thrillers where suspense was created by delaying revelations…
Straight talking
It’s widely agreed that the most difficult form of opera to bring off is operetta, whether of the Austro-German or…
Straight talking
It’s widely agreed that the most difficult form of opera to bring off is operetta, whether of the Austro-German or…
Terry’s all gold
For once, the superlatives that have greeted Terry Wogan’s death from cancer have been entirely in keeping with the man.…
Terry’s all gold
For once, the superlatives that have greeted Terry Wogan’s death from cancer have been entirely in keeping with the man.…
Location
Old friends, we scarcely speak of death or dying. As ever, the displacements continue, just as when we used to…
Unreliable Narrator
If a clock can be a household’s totem then we remain hopeful ours will show us an accurate blue moon…
Losing a Crown in the National Portrait Gallery
The cafe was full of connoisseurs of the scones. As he bit into his flapjack a sinister uncoupling took place…
Easy Street
Roller skating down the main road in the cycle lane, her easy, smooth and flowing scissor stride on booted castors,…
Consider this…
Australia was invented Malcolm Turnbull appeared on Channel Ten’s The Panel on Australia Day. Panellist, Waleed Aly chided the PM…
Consider this…
Australia was invented Malcolm Turnbull appeared on Channel Ten’s The Panel on Australia Day. Panellist, Waleed Aly chided the PM…
Bridge
The Brits have done brilliantly in Icelandair’s annual bridge festival in Reykjavik and this year was no different. The winners…
The cost of freedom
‘Military madness’, sang Graham Nash, ‘is killing my country.’ That was back in the ‘70s when US and Australian forces…
I told you so: the UK electricity gap looms wider than ever
Amid all the turmoil in global energy markets, we should not lose sight of the UK power programme that we’re…
The London mayoral election will be a battle between whatsisface and whatsisname
London, 2012. It’s Olympic year, and east London is sprouting anew, and our city feels like the capital of the…
Why I now believe in positive discrimination
The Prime Minister no doubt knew he would be fanning the flames when he waded into the argument about the…
The Spectator’s notes
In 2000, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, accused Magdalen College, Oxford, of class bias in failing to…
Weekend world
When the time comes to make programmes looking back on the 2010s, I wonder which aspects of life today will…
South Africa
There are plenty of places to fly to for winter sun, but only one place that offers five-star hotels for…
The Donald isn’t dead yet
Listen http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3 If Donald Trump had won in Iowa on Monday night, everybody would still be saying what a brilliant…
What fun it will be if Trump becomes president
I suppose spite and schadenfreude are thinnish reasons, intellectually, for wishing Donald Trump to become the next American president (and…
Portrait of the week
Home Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, prepared a paper on the four areas of concern between Britain…
Diary
Also in Fraser Nelson’s diary: a minister in economy class, and how to do your bit for social mobility
Barometer
Also in our Barometer column: the fate of beached whales, and the fastest and slowest commutes
