Why are there so many fat people in pictures of food banks?
If you’re going to take advantage of a food bank, at least have the good grace to look a bit peckish and skeletal
All I want for Christmas is another dose of the flu
For a freelance like me, illness is the only hope of time off
The rare joy of the commonplace book
A collection often tells us more, unwittingly, about its compiler than a self-description would
The good old days when I had no idea what I was doing
Graduate poverty, at least at first, carries a weightlessness – a sense of being able to observe society from the outside
Can’t afford Pesto or Boris? Or even Ant and Dec? Try the bloke from The Spectator
Plus: Seeing my father in the BT archive; and hoping for a normal new year
What’s behind the Boris show?
To interview the Mayor of London is to witness an extraordinary performance
Save the carol!
Singing, like swimming, is natural, healthy and intensely pleasurable — but you have to try it to know
My strangest date
Stories of the path of romance from A.L. Kennedy, Jack Whitehall, Celia Walden, Toby Young and many others
Back to the front
The need for a ‘more active foreign policy’ clashes with the deep-seated pacifism of the federal republic
Thrown to the lions
If the Christians of Iraq and Syria are to survive, they may have to do it in Acton
Salmond’s revenge
Scotland’s former first minister on the allure of the Queen and Prince Charles – and the defects of Cameron and Miliband
Bletchley spark
Once secret, then misrepresented, the story of Bletchley Park has become a worldwide cult
