Barometer
Safe house Lord Sewel is unique in leaving the House of Lords in disgrace. Until the House of Lords Reform…
Diary
The week starts well. My debut novel, The Miniaturist, is a year old. On the anniversary of its publication, my…
Out of service
From ‘The new standard’, The Spectator, 24 July 1915: If a change must be made at all, it is worthwhile to…
Portrait of the week
Home A man died when 1,500 migrants tried to enter the Channel Tunnel terminal in Calais in one night. The…
Dedicated follower of fashion
Iris is a documentary portrait of Iris Apfel, the nonagenarian New York fashion icon. Nope, me neither, but that’s irrelevant,…
Look at my Fringe
Like everyone performing at the Edinburgh Fringe I’m about to make a lot of mistakes. I’m about to lose a…
Pulp fiction
Hot, languorous, sizzling… I was thinking what an ideal show Matthew Bourne’s noir comedy is to watch on a summer’s…
Orchestral infallibility
Watching the Berlin Philharmonic going into conclave to choose a successor to Simon Rattle — after countless hours of secret…
Orchestral infallibility
Watching the Berlin Philharmonic going into conclave to choose a successor to Simon Rattle — after countless hours of secret…
Downing Street diary
Ridiculously premature talk of Prime Ministerial succession, commentary by John Howard on the need to secure national borders and a…
Do Nikkei and the FT really share the same journalistic values?
It’s nearly 30 years since I worked in Japan, but I still have a few words of the language and…
A twinge of fear, and a glimpse of a harsher world
I celebrated Eid in a sandy bay in Sri Lanka, watching from the warm, shallow sea as gaggles of local…
Machetes and the middle classes
Another stabbing in my new neighbourhood, not with an axe or with a samurai sword this time, but a machete.…
The Spectator’s Notes
Obviously when one attends what the papers call ‘cocaine-fuelled orgies’, one expects to find several members of the peerage present,…
Affairs in squares
On all those comic lists of the world’s shortest books (Great Italian War Heroes, My Hunt for the Real Killers,…
Australian notes
The Prime Minister and the journalist Greg Sheridan go back a long way. The other evening in Sydney’s Parliament House,…
The agony of Labour’s old-fashioned modernisers
Listen http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/theosbornesupremacy/media.mp3 The exhausted Labour leadership contest takes a bucket-and-spade holiday next week, with all four candidates agreeing to an…
If Corbyn becomes PM, I’m blaming you lot
Imagine, for a moment, the following scenario. In 2016 Britain votes narrowly to remain within the European Union, despite the…
Giving up the fight
“Whether it’s in Iraq, Syria, Libya or elsewhere — as Prime Minister, if I believe there is a specific threat…
Portrait of the week
Home Parents would be able to have their children’s passports removed if they were suspected of planning to travel abroad…
Diary
Plus: A worthy successor to the BBC Micro; and a behavioural science project at KCL graduation day
Barometer
Plus: Water cannon in Northern Ireland; what truancy can save in holiday costs; and the odds of an official message on ET
Vespasian vs Islamic State
Let these suicidal lunatics get on with slaughtering each other — why invite disaster by plunging into battle?
Profiteering in the pits
From ‘Coal and its problems’, The Spectator, 24 July 1915: Instead of attempting to regulate prices, the government ought to have…
