The Heckler: those who doubt the brilliance of Phil Collins are snobs
Don’t they realise pop music is supposed to be naff?
Spectator Australia Wine Club – December
Welcome to the inaugural Spectator Australia Wine Club offer. This page will focus on the unprocurable wines, the small-volume award-winners,…
Proof and Belief
On the hearth of the working fireplace, the flags dusted with ash, we leave mince pies and a bottle of…
Yuletide notes
I can’t help it, call me soppy or simple, but I can’t help but get a lump in my throat…
The year in books
In an age of white noise Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children (MUP, $33) stands out as a loving…
Culture Buff
Time for a quick glance over my shoulder at the passing year. Culturally it was busy enough but with little…
Flogging parsons
Much like the first convicts, Australians today cower before the great moralisers of the day
Asian notes
Shopping in the Asian capitals has long been a lure for tourists but I was taken a little aback when…
Yes, Virginia
Virginia, your little conservative friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do…
Brown study
It is good to see the Greens doing their bit to stop the evil gender bias and stereotyping now so…
Barbeque stoppers
So here’s a question for the history buffs – name the last Australian Knight. The Queen presented the Award at…
Australian diary
Turnbull the blackbird has been obsessing me, stealing what’s not his. He’s hovering by a nest right outside my study…
The rise and fall of Sony
Here is a Japanese fairy tale for Christmas. An allegory of insight, opportunism and a fall from favour. It is…
Answers to ‘Spot the Line of Poetry’
1. Ill-met by moonlight (Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) 2. Hope springs eternal in the human breast (Pope’s ‘An Essay…
Spot the line of poetry
For the answers click here The post Spot the line of poetry appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to…
All Change
Based on a handwritten notebook of recipes from Dorothy Eliza Barnes, my grandmother, a shepherd’s wife, who had worked as…
December
The ferns around the badgers’ sett are dying down, and fine webs fret the brambles. By late afternoon the moon…
Proof and Belief
On the hearth of the working fireplace, the flags dusted with ash, we leave mince pies and a bottle of…
Mrs Badgery
Wilkie Collins’s ‘Mrs Badgery’, rarely seen since its first publication in Dickens’s Household Words magazine in September 1857, is an…
The answers
On the record 1. Jean-Claude Juncker 2. David Cameron 3. Sir Tim Hunt 4. Jeremy Corbyn 5. President Vladimir Putin…
Christmas Quiz
On the record In 2015, who said:1. We must get the cow off the ice. 2. It’s decision time —…
