Portrait of the week
And David Bowie dies at 69, shadow cabinet members resign, food aid is taken to Madaya, and El Chapo is captured
Diary
Plus: Crewkerne station and the Mumbai call centre; hipsters should relocate to The Potteries; 500 years since More’s Utopia
The mercenaries of IS and ancient Greece
Jihadi warriors boast that they don’t fear death... but what when the money to pay them runs out?
The Spectator’s Notes
Also: There should be an advice booklet for those taking up public sector appointments
Bowie once praised Adolf Hitler… but he was always changing his tune
It wasn’t being a chameleon or sexual revolutionary that made him important, but his brilliant songs
Nature is red in tooth and claw. Get over it
The BBC’s Chris Packham should read the great amateur naturalist’s books and learn a few things
RBS’s note from a crashing plane: wild headline-grabbing or wise advice?
Plus: It must be decades since I bought underwear at Marks & Spencer — but for a car picnic they can’t be beaten
Project Fear
It worked in Scotland, so ‘Project Fear’ will be deployed again to persuade Britain to stay in Europe
Sweden’s shameful cover-up
Stockholm police were warned not to give descriptions of the perpetrators lest they were accused of being racist
Keynes’s big mistake
Keynesian deficit spending makes sense – but over and over again it has not worked
America Notebook
Can no one save the centre-right from this bombastic, populist, nationalist billionaire?
Brighton’s gone Brideshead
It’s a brave person who dares take on the drunken Mileses and Gileses and Violets running amok in the new student ghettoes
Educating Pakistan
As the founder of 256 schools, Seema Aziz has transformed the lives of millions. So why does the West ignore her story?
One for all
Mei Fong’s haunting One Child explains the very serious unforeseen consequences of ‘China’s most radical experiment’
The other glorious revolution
Or so David Wootton seems to suggest, in a giant treatise celebrating the 17th century’s other glorious revolution
Act of Faith
This winter morning between seven and eight, half a white moon still present, a ghost not shining on plentiful frost…
Laughter and tears
Alaa Al Aswany’s latest colourful saga of Cairo life is also an important social satire on modern Egypt
Anatomy of a bestseller
Andy Martin describes the many months he spent observing Lee Child — fuelled by coffee and Camels — complete his 20th Reacher novel
Of hearts and heads
David Aaronovitch’s family memoir reminds Alan Johnson that — thanks to the Labour party — communism failed to capture British hearts and minds
Altar, font and arch and pew
Michael Hodges’s colourful guide is a welcome reminder of the sheer scale and number of churches that survived the Blitz
Cold comfort for Gibbons fans
The previously unpublished Pure Juliet will be cold comfort for fans of Gibbons’s famous first novel
