Quintilian on lecturers
Professor Louise Richardson says she’s not sure how to judge teaching. But Quintilian knew
Disciplined brutality
From ‘The Crimes of Germany’, The Spectator, 29 January 1916: It would be a relief, a partial solution, if only…
Stay or leave, Europe is sinking anyway
Better to let it fall apart while still on board than get the blame for its demise, say Tory ministers
If you’re stupid enough to let all these people in, at least treat them decently
Our metropolitan elite aren’t just silly. They have a nasty side, too
Time to put my money where my mouth is
I’ve invested in a fund that will aim to short-sell overvalued renewable energy stocks
Mr Bear is back: sit tight because he may be with us for a while
Plus: Google’s taxes; and why Scunthorpe Ladies’ Luncheon Club is my Davos
In defence of gender
What started as a baffling skirmish on the wilder shores of victim culture has now turned into something more menacing
Another Slice
All the books stored above our heads, all the books there aren’t enough hours to read again, and still we…
Turkey’s climate of fear
President Erdogan’s increasingly tyrannical regime is suppressing the truth about its war on the Kurds
Calling the shots
Rubbing shoulders with the hunters, urban cowboys and trigger-happy heroes at Las Vegas’s Shot Show
South Georgia Notebook
Matt Ridley’s South Atlantic notebook, on explorers’ legacies, the Falklands and a mine-clearing midfielder
The Venice Accademia
Picture for picture, it has perhaps the most concentrated collection of masterpieces anywhere
Autocracy tempered by strangulation
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s gripping account of life under the tsars shows how Russia has always been dedicated to autocracy
Not so happy valley
Simon Barnes’s Sacred Combe in Zambia is not the idyll he imagines— and his bumptious optimism is exasperating
Poverty + anarchy + drug dollars = Mexico
According to Ioan Grillo’s Gangster Warlords we are now all in thrall to Latin America’s drug cartels for just about every commodity
Sharing the Dog
The Dog share didn’t work out well in the end. For a start, Dog — no mean manipulator — cadged…
A country in crisis
According to Jack Shenker, things could hardly be worse for this great country after its tragically failed revolution
Rewriting the merchant’s tale
This setting of the Merchant of Venice in Cheshire’s golden triangle is a serious comic masterpiece
Alive and kicking
Essays by Shirley Hazzard and the late Christopher Hitchens make for outstanding reading — in very different ways
Tricks of the trade
Maria Konnikova explains the subtle wiles of the grifter— but might her book itself be an elaborate con?
Siftings
And we awake like children to tiny snow sprinkled on shed and car roofs, thinking, Will it last, will it…
Very much like a whale
Adam Skolnik tries to fathom what makes people risk their lives in this pitiless sport
A legend in her own time
Boys in the Trees, the singer-songwriter’s extraordinarily intimate memoir, covers adultery, addiction and marriage to sweet baby James
