All I want for Christmas is another dose of the flu
Have you had the horrid bug that’s going round yet? I’ve got it now and I do hope you get…
Why scary fairy stories are the best
Moving house, stacking books in boxes, I came across a clutch of fairy books, Andrew Lang’s folk tales from around…
The rare joy of the commonplace book
Among the gifts that have come my way this Christmas season, none has given me pleasure more immediate or more…
The age of indecision
A recent email from Samantha Cameron started an intriguing debate in the Prime Minister’s social circle. It was an invitation…
The Spectator’s notes
Pope Francis is favourably compared to Pope Benedict in the media. I hope it is not being slavishly papist to…
Australian notes
It’s worth repeating. A British Prime Minister (the Earl of Derby) to Queen Victoria: ‘The definition of an Independent Member…
Osborne’s ambition deficit
He achieves great things when he goes for it. On the debt, he's not going for it
Portrait of the week
Home The government spent days announcing how the Autumn Statement would allocate funds. ‘Frontline’ parts of the National Health Service…
Diary
There are more than 20 Sun journalists still on trial or facing prosecution — some of whom have been on bail for three years
Barometer
Plus: Other ways to spend the £3 million cost of ‘plebgate’, and will Bicester really be a garden city?
From the archives
From ‘The Honourable Spy’, The Spectator, 5 December 1914: Decency is violated by the military spy when he becomes, for…
This Chancellor is a most political animal
Osborne has achieved one of the most difficult things in his profession: renewing himself in office
A story of vile, stupid lefties – and dodgy statistics
The truth about all those utterly bogus statistics you see in the newspapers
Why argue when you can simply take offence?
It happened to Michael Gove. It's happened to me. I'm starting to wonder if it's the death of debate
Is that a black swan I see before me? Cheap oil has strange consequences
Plus: A corporate morality tale about reward and achievement
Moscow calling
It looks like a news channel. It talks like a news channel. It says whatever Putin wants
Into the Night
You fling yourself out the door into the wind and start to row yourself down the steep hill with your…
Russia falling
Since the invasion of Crimea, Russia's President has been conducting an experiment in anti-western rebellion
How HS2 blights lives
My dad’s back working in a car factory at 77, a lifetime’s work wrecked by a blighted house
Beyond the rainbow
It's not that he presided over a golden age; it's that the problems have become clearer since
The Pope is all right
It’s in his leadership of Argentina’s Jesuits, when he laid emphasis on the perspective of the ordinary faithful poor, that the truth is to be found
Cider-making
The plan was to pour the apple juice into an oak hogshead, freshly emptied of its whisky...
