What real debate looks like
Modern politicians only really engage with each other behind closed doors
From the archives
From The Spectator, 27 February 1915: Observers of birds have been much interested by the evidence, which seems to be fairly…
The not-very-general election
With each party uncompetitive in large parts of the country, expect a regionalised campaign in which leaders talk past one another
That’ll teach you to attempt a joke, Sean
The stupidly PC actor has put his foot in it and is being called a racist by the moronsphere
Why do bright schoolgirls run away to Syria?
Isis may seem like bullies to us, but in the skewed light of a smartphone they appear as underdogs, a revolutionary brave brigade taking on the big bad West
A tale of two shops – and two philosophies
Some things are Aldi. Other things are Lush. I’m Aldi all the way
Just in time, Osborne answers Labour’s 50p tax trick with a bumper monthly surplus
Plus: The lessons of Nick Leeson and a salute to Sir Robert Wade-Gery
Divided we fall
Scotland’s political earthquake isn’t over, and the rest of the UK doesn’t yet understand the consequences
Small things in the cathedral
A place to see the little things between the monuments and tombs. As in the chapel of St Gabriel, a…
Stand up for ex-Muslims
These incredibly brave people are risking their lives for the freedom not to believe. They deserve better from us
The war on rural England
We’re destroying green belts and despoiling villages for the sake of a moral crusade based on developers’ propaganda
The American tradition
From the State of the Union address to the marine’s salute as the president leaves his helicopter, we like nothing better than creating complicated little rituals
Feel the burn
According to Radio 4, wood-burning stoves are a mark of wordly success. Mine is reducing me to a cold, tired, red-eyed wreck
My dad saved the pound
If you’re grateful not to be in the euro, it’s James Goldsmith and his ‘rebel army’ you should thank
For blackberry, read BlackBerry
In a review of Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane Adam Nicolson reminds us that the most poetic descriptions of nature were once the everyday speech of ordinary countrymen
A load of old Boltzmann
Alexander Masters finds a great mathematician’s ‘popular’ book impenetrable from page four
While the wound was still raw
Tracey Thorn is surprised that Kim Gordon, once the embodiment of cool, should be sounding off so publicly about her husband’s infidelity
Here be dragons
James Walton, reviewing The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro finds it more admirable than enjoyable
Booked for a world tour
A review of Reading the World by Ann Morgan finds a year-long blog also makes a brilliant, unlikely book
Pier pressure
A review of Michael Arditti’s Widows and Orphans suggests that we are all waifs and strays now in our broken society
Fame and scandal in the family
A review of the Lost Imperialist by Andrew Gailey wonders how Queen Victoria’s distinguished proconsul, who met everyone from Sitting Bull to Bismarck, could have slipped so far into oblivion
Daffodils
These sprightly flowers are no cowards. They poke forth sun seeking heads, proudly proclaim when earth remains clenched in winter’s…
March of the robots
Will Self, reviewing Nicholas Carr’s The Glass Cage, predicts the inexorable rise of the computer in a defiantly soulless society