Portrait of the week
Home The government postponed a Commons vote on relaxing the Hunting Act in England and Wales after the Scottish National…
Diary
Plus: the gleaming new Laidlaw Library; the BBC and the arts; and a meeting with my old teacher
On Wimbledon grunters
Hurrah for the Wimbledon men’s finalists, who played without emitting revolting gasps
Answering the call of duty
From ‘Education and Honour’, The Spectator, 17 July 1915: The young man who has been to a Public School or…
Jeremy Corbyn’s extraordinary success is a coup for the Tories
If he becomes Labour leader, the party will move further leftwards
I’m emigrating to Islamic State – see ya, kafirs!
There’s plenty I can find to do out there, and if I don’t like it I’ll just come back
Ten resolutions that should make my next 50 years pass more smoothly
If all goes according to plan, the next 50 years will pass much more smoothly
A deal for the good of the world, but in Vienna rather than Brussels
Plus: a woman for Barclays? And a new comedy of confusion for our times
Al-Qaeda could end up the big winners in Syria
Fear of Isis is leading the Arab states to lend support to the lesser of two evils
Greece Notebook
Despite the sadness, it feels very safe here. Even the riot police are relaxed, cheerfully feeding the birds
Africa’s most wanted
An Ethiopian called Ghermay Ermias is the dangerous and elusive criminal behind Europe’s migrant crisis
God’s new business plan
Justin Welby wants to focus on growth – and has City high-flyers on hand to help him do it. Can he take his fractious Church with him?
A wolf in the kitchen
The fad for owning animals from films is a reflection of humans’ disrespect for nature
Who dares lies
Christopher Lee never exactly lied about his creditable wartime record, but he encouraged its embellishment. It’s a surprisingly common story
Blue is the collar
Stephen Crabb, the working-class Welsh Secretary with a fondness for Margaret Thatcher
A bad novel on the way to a good one
Harper Lee’s publishers are much to blame for resurrecting this piece of confused juvenilia. It should have remained where it belongs — in the bottom drawer
Lovely house of ill repute
The Mistresses of Cliveden by Natalie Livingstone explores the great house’s exotic history, ending with Christine Keeler, the swimming pool and the Profumo Affair
Reality games
A searing satire set in a dystopic future,Victor Pelevin’s 2011 S.N.U.F.F. — now brilliantly translated into English — has been hailed as a prescient warning of Russia’s intentions in Ukraine
The rich are a different species
Wednesday Martin’s Primates of Park Avenue mocks New York’s high-maintenance ‘mommies’ who worry sleeplessly over money, infidelity and dieting. But they are a much stranger breed than this memoir makes out
Mission near impossible
Tension mounts in Saul David’s compulsive chronicle of hijacked Air France Flight 139 and the rush to save the hostages in Entebbe 40 years ago
One événement after another
The more inconvenient, bloodstained événements of French history are dismissed as ‘aberrations’, organised by ‘enemies of the fatherland’, according to Jonathan Fenby’s latest History of Modern France
Anyone for ice tennis?
In his survey of the world’s most ludicrous and best-forgotten sports, Edward Brooke-Hitching reveals the extraordinary cruelty and inventiveness of mankind at play
Stately Spanish galleons with gold moidores
Columbus’s discovery of America led to a glorious literary and artistic flowering in early modern Spain, according to Robert Goodwin’s Spain: The Centre of the World, 1519–1682
