Let’s rethink the working week
Whenever I hear the phrase ‘hard-working families’ a little voice in my head asks ‘what about the lazier, chilled-out families?…
Wild life
Laikipia When I was a boy in Devon we had an orchard. On a string of autumns, as the fruit…
Plutarch and Aristotle vs Lynton Crosby
Attack Ed Miliband and sing up the long-term economic plan: that is the now obviously useless scheme devised by the…
Barometer
Any answers? Nigel Farage accused the audience in the BBC opposition leaders’ debate of being left-wing. Need insulting an audience…
Florence weeps
From ‘Soldiers of Italy’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: It is winter in Florence. The sun shines, but snow lies low on Monte…
Portrait of the week
Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into…
Superheroic failure
Avengers: Age of Ultron is the second film in the Avengers franchise, as written and directed by Joss Whedon, and…
Lethal weapon
The current talking-point at the Royal Ballet is the Russians milling around. One can sound unfortunately as if one’s starting…
Curators
As a purveyor of lairy souvenirs Venice outdoes even Lourdes. The scores of shops and booths that peddle this lagoonal…
Curators
As a purveyor of lairy souvenirs Venice outdoes even Lourdes. The scores of shops and booths that peddle this lagoonal…
Talisman
She’s meant to be good with words, used to medicating others with a timely postcard — FABULOUS WOMAN YOU! Today…
i.m. AMSTRAD
Dear Lord Sugar, it’s been a sad week. A kind of bereavement, really. Today, a council employee in a yellow…
Spring
The sparrows banter in the bushes that crowd the walls of the World’s End alleyway as I walk to the…
Cheap shots and uncosted bribes are drowning out vision, wisdom and optimism
The interesting thing about Labour’s pledge to abolish non-dom tax status — a squib designed to trap Tories into expressing…
It really must be a mid-life crisis. I’ve fallen in love with a pony
Because I’m reckless, stupid and irresponsible, I normally get landed with the biggest, most obstreperous hunters. But the other weekend…
Will jailing Katie Hopkins save the lives of migrants? I have my doubts
More than a thousand migrants have died attempting to get into Europe over the past week, including 900 who perished…
Devil in her ayatollahs
Looking like a cross between Princess Diana and Michael Jackson, our glamourous foreign minister last week rocked into – of…
Hong Kong diary
After a year of living in Sydney, the smog in Hong Kong is a shock. I do not see even…
Australian notes
Malcolm Turnbull is never far from the front pages (or even the covers of men’s fashion magazines!) usually with stories…
A deadly silence
Cameron’s triumphant intervention in Libya has ended with death in the Mediterranean. This is why we need foreign policy to become an election issue
Portrait of the week
Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news…
Barometer
Plus: What Viv Nicholson’s spending spree would cost today, and where the right to buy is used most
Demosthenes vs Michael Fallon
The Defence Secretary could — and should — have taken a lesson in rhetoric from ancient Athens
Am I still an Englishman?
From ‘Some reflections of an alien enemy: the contradiction between being and feeling an Englishman, by a Czech’, The Spectator, 17…
