Barometer
Plus: The figures on live animal exports, flood spending and Romanian voters in Portsmouth
Aristophanes on the Fake Sheikh
Solon created a vacancy for the ancient equivalents of the Fake Sheikh
From the archives
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 21 November 1914: We are glad to learn that the laudable persistence of…
Sturgeon the unstoppable
Unionists thought the SNP would collapse after a ‘no’ vote. They couldn’t have been more wrong
The nation’s mental age is four, and dropping
To judge from X Factor and recent Twitter storms, the nation’s mental age is four, and dropping
Without patriotism, there’s no civilisation
You trust yourself first, your family, then your clan and then, slowly and hesitantly, something bigger
The Green Blob has claimed another victim
Holding the ‘correct’ view on climate change is one thing, but you also have to swallow the official line on GM crops
Qatar’s bid for Canary Wharf fills me with foreboding, even if they deserve each other
Plus: The maker of Jaffa Cakes is sold to Turkey while Farrow & Ball heads for Hollywood
Students of dogma
Student unions’ ‘no platform’ policy is expanding to cover pretty much anyone whose views don’t fit prevailing groupthink
The Imagined Day
The imagined day includes sunshine and shopping And people saying Yes and being on my side. There’ll also be traffic…
Demons of deflation
It’s a real problem, but the answer has less to do with bond-buying than with applied psychology
The hate that dare not speak its name
The way they treat women is not the catch – it’s the unspoken main attraction
After the Tea Party
Today’s Republicans talk less about God and more about fighting illegal immigration
A last time for everything
An acceptance of these occasions, surely, is a sign you’ve accepted you’re not immortal. It’s death by a thousand lasts
Hotels for dogs
Especially those that are stopovers for long-distance drivers rather than destinations in themselves
Books of the Year
Plus choices from Jane Ridley, Marcus Berkmann, Sam Leith, Molly Guinness, Melanie McDonagh, Christopher Howse, Charlotte Moore, Philip Hensher, Lewis Jones, John Preston, Martin Gayford, Susie Dent, Ian Thomson, Piers Paul Read, Mark Mason, Bevis Hillier, Allan Mallinson, Peter Parker, James Walton, James McConnachie, William Leith, Philip Ziegler and Cressida Connolly
The wandering Jew
A review of The Impossible Exile by George Prochnik. Contemporaries sniped at his success, but for a Jewish novelist in Austria in the 1930s, the possibilities of remaining a comic figure were few
Scotland the brave
A review of Michael Fry’s A Higher World examines the long 18th century, in which the Union of England and Scotland was consolidated
Gloriana waits and sees
A review of Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince by Lisa Hilton argues that the queen’s true greatness lay in her inactivity and stalling tactics
A choice of humorous books
Marcus Berkmann’s round-up of the year’s best humorous books includes gems from Michael Frayn, Nora Ephron, QI, Peter Jones, John D. Barrow, Stephen Collins and Peanuts
The driving force of an ageing rocker
In a review of Special Deluxe, not much is given away about Neil Young — except that he toured with his band in a souped-up hearse named ‘Mort’
