Eastern airs
On Private Passions this week the writer Amitav Ghosh gave us a refreshingly different version of what has become a…
Eastern airs
On Private Passions this week the writer Amitav Ghosh gave us a refreshingly different version of what has become a…
Remembering P.J. Kavanagh
‘Elms at the end of twilight are very interesting,’ wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his journal: ‘Against the sky they…
Hoof-trimming
The below is an unpublished poem, written for Moortown, the verse-diary of Ted Hughes’s experiences of farming in Devon in…
On the way to Plumpton
We pull up at Wivelsfield, under a blue sky, and glance out at the one figure on the platform: a…
Review
(reading Daphne Rooke) Thank you for the book. It reminded me in the way she writes, dry as the Karoo,…
Bridge
The cheating scandal rages on. The latest to be accused is the world’s number one-ranked pair, Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio…
Coup de (dis)grâce
The knifing of Tony Abbott will go down as one of the most destructive and arrogant acts of political bastardry…
The Living Wage is nifty politics – but let’s see more help for small business too
What is George Osborne’s Living Wage? Is it a ploy to shift cost from the taxpayer to the employer by…
The problem with Corbyn’s hatred of the media
The new leader walks across a bridge, in the dark, while the journalist asks him questions. He’s not shouting, this…
Soon we will accept that useless lives should end
Listen http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thedeathoftheleft/media.mp3 Throughout the short life of the Assisted Dying Bill which failed last week in the Commons, the ‘faith…
Corbyn puts the EU referendum on a knife edge
Listen http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thedeathoftheleft/media.mp3 No one watching Jeremy Corbyn walk around the Palace of Westminster would imagine that he had just won…
The Spectator’s notes
When the Labour party began, its purpose was the representation of labour (i.e. workers) in the House of Commons. Indeed,…
Socialist Cluedo
What a load of manipulative, hysterical tosh is An Inspector Calls. It wasn’t a work with which I was familiar…
Why emote about migrants during a concert?
How should we deal with people who sneeze in public places? Stephen Jackson, aged 49, has found himself in court…
The fog of law
The Prime Minister should have kept things simple and avoided legalistic talk of imminent attacks
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, told Parliament that he had authorised the killing, on 21 August, by means of…
Barometer
Plus: the countries that have most refugees, hurricanes decade by decade, and Britain’s prehistoric monuments
Livy on immigration policy
As Livy explains, it was Rome’s boast that from early times they understood the virtues of intelligent dealing with outsiders
A Russian revolution
From ‘The situation in Russia’, The Spectator, 11 September 1915: A new Russia has been arising within the old while the war has…
How Gordon Brown’s hit man became Labour’s peacemaker
Blairites once reviled him as a fat thug. Now they reckon he might be the only man who can save their party
The Spectator’s notes
Plus: Why does the ummah not help Muslim refugees?; dogs and assisted dying; a Keith Joseph mystery
Soon, having sex and having children will be utterly disconnected
One day kids will be a lifestyle choice, an accessory, devolved from notions of faith and nature. But we’re not there yet
