Modern manners
Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress has been a rich resource for artists. Film-makers recognise his modern moral subjects as an ancestor…
No laughing matter
Swans, swans, more swans. If the lifespan of a dance critic were calculated by the number of performances of Swan…
Extreme poetic licence
He was always lucky, and he knew it: lucky in the secure rural intimacy of the upbringing described in Cider…
Spoken For
What I want to tell you is I can dream with my eyes wide open, like riding a bicycle without…
I may not know much about khat, but I know banning it is crazy
Khat is a leafy stimulant chewed mainly, I gather, by Somalis. This week the government banned its possession and sale.…
A bacon bap isn’t Miliband’s problem. We are
Listen http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_26_June_2014_v4.mp3 That bacon bap earlier this month was not the cause of Ed Miliband’s unpopularity. Ed Miliband’s unpopularity was…
Australian notes
The back page of the New York Times put it well. It was an empty broadsheet page except for the…
What the West has lost
The world is much better for the revolutions that occurred in Eastern Europe. But the West has lost some moral clarity
Terror’s comeback kids
Al-Qa'eda in Iraq faded away. ISIS may well do too. But don't you dare say 'mission accomplished'...
How the Westminster hawk became an endangered species
Parliament has no appetite to intervene. But don’t expect it to stay like that for ever
À la recherche du tea perdu
We can't promise sandwiches of unknown nature, or a mad hatter. But there will be cake
This oil price rise is a blip, not a spike – but it’s still a timely reminder to get fracking
Plus: Good and bad banking challengers, and the latest threat to the Co-op
Quiet, calm consideration…
A review of Inside Enemy, by Alan Judd. A thriller that is plausible, curiously old-fashioned and deceptively calm in its build-up – and one of Judd’s best
Oh, what a tangled web
A review of The House of Fiction: Leonard, Susan and Elizabeth Jolley: A Memoir, by Susan Swingler, ‘a story of sex, love, family secrets and deception’
No need for special pleading
A review of Deaf, Dumb and Brilliant: Johannes Thopas, Master Draughtsman, by Rudi Ekkart. Thopas was an equal of his peers - his disability shouldn’t even come into it
Funny, rude and tender
A review of Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, by Viv Albertine. A funny, rude, tender, and superbly written memoir
Lacking the light touch
Plus: a straightforwardly colourful first staging of Offenbach’s gently satirical Vert-Vert at Garsington
Teen spirit
And to get out of that corner, The Fault in Our Stars paints itself into yet another contrived corner - until it runs out of corners
Wild life
Rift Valley Many of my British tribe fled Kenya around independence in 1963 because they believed there was no future.…
