Fashion
In Competition No. 2922 you were invited to invent new garments and provide definitions. Thanks to the reader who, inspired…
Dear Mary: I always end up subsidising my greedy friend’s lunch
Q. I have lunch once a month with an old university friend. Over the years we have both thickened out…
We celebrated a birth with a wine that will last decades
Good Saturday, 2015, stepping westward. Autumn sunshine: autumn leaves, almost comparable to New England: pumpkins everywhere, very New England. We…
Hot air summit
The delegates who will gather for the star-studded Paris climate summit include celebrities, presidents and perhaps even the Pope. Among…
High life
I have finally moved into my new flat, a jewel of a place in a pre-first world war Park Avenue…
Long life
The last time I was in New Orleans was during the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico when…
Long life
The last time I was in New Orleans was during the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico when…
How we ended up ‘cisgender’
‘That’s not how you spell “system”,’ said my husband triumphantly, pointing with his whisky glass at a placard inveighing against…
Real life
A letter has arrived summoning me to parents’ evening to discuss Cydney’s progress. Yes, I am aware that Cydney is…
Nature beats nurture nearly every time
I’ve been doing some thinking recently about the findings of behavioural geneticists and their implications for education policy. For instance,…
Nature beats nurture nearly every time
I’ve been doing some thinking recently about the findings of behavioural geneticists and their implications for education policy. For instance,…
Hayek was right: you can’t understand society without evolution
In December the controversial satellite TV channel ReallyTV launches its Christmas season with a flagship reality show called From Homs to…
How ancient Athens handled immigrants
Among all the arguments about how many non-EU immigrants we should let in, campaigners are proposing a scheme for private…
Barometer
Family business Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Trudeau, was elected to his father’s old job as Prime Minister of Canada.…
Diary
I had only experienced great loss when my mother died. It was desperately harrowing, but not as harrowing as the…
The fall of a king
From ‘News of the week’, The Spectator, 6 November 1915: We greatly regret to record a serious accident to the King.…
Portrait of the week
Home The all-party Foreign Affairs Committee urged David Cameron, the Prime Minister, not to press ahead with a Commons vote…
Theatre and transgression in Europe’s last dictatorship
In a drab residential street in foggy, damp Minsk, four students are at work in a squat white building that…
Lush, lyrical, exquisite
Brooklyn is a wee slip of a thing compared to the Bond film, Spectre, and cost $12 million, as opposed…
West End wannabe
The love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price… The amount of unconditional love sloshing about at…
M.C. Escher: limited, repetitive, but he deserves a place in art history
‘Surely,’ mused the Dutch artist M.C. Escher, ‘it is a bit absurd to draw a few lines and then claim:…
Fantasy on ice
In this exciting new era of Spectator cruises I have been put in mind of a dream event long in…
Fantasy on ice
In this exciting new era of Spectator cruises I have been put in mind of a dream event long in…
