When did gyms become so unfriendly?
One of the drawbacks of being on the jabs is that you can lose muscle mass as well as body…
Spectator Competition: Love is…
For Competition 3436 you were invited to submit a poem whose first line is ‘O my love is like [fill…
Puzzling it out
‘This is why you don’t do puzzles, kids,’ drawled Magnus Carlsen, after a lucky escape in a recent blitz game…
British politics has become a Devil’s Wheel
There is a moment in Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall which has been much on my mind lately. It is…
How Andrew could save the royal family
The tsunami of Jeffrey Epstein material released this month has been both horrifying and gratifying. It makes clear the extent…
Who doesn’t want a better life?
Every couple of years a columnist-cum-novelist will inevitably stoop to shameless self-promotion. In my defence, at least the novel released…
The stakeholder class needs blowing up
In February 1974, a frustrated Ted Heath, unable to achieve anything in government against constant opposition by the mighty trade…
What explains the weird military hype around Al Carns?
If Keir Starmer resigned tomorrow, the Labour party would be thrown into confusion. None of its factions has an obvious…
Why not privatise tax collection?
Twice a year the taxman comes to call, exhibiting all the bossy incompetence one expects from the government machine. Why…
Meet the Jellycat kidults
On the fourth floor of Selfridges, in London, is the children’s toy department. Most of the vast space is given…
Letters: AI won’t save the army
Brute force Sir: General Sir Nick Carter is correct to point out the fragility of the UK’s armed forces today…
Japan’s female leader is a bright beacon, but do her sums add up?
My scepticism towards soaring markets with unconvincing fundamentals was nurtured by working in Tokyo in the mid-1980s, when the Nikkei…
The BBC’s Lord of the Flies is mesmerically brilliant
I don’t much like Lord of the Flies. It’s nasty, weird in an oblique, psychotic way and wrong. William Golding…
Mumford & Sons are trolling themselves: Prizefighter reviewed
It is axiomatic that most artists spend the first few years of their career trying to achieve some level of…
Eye-catching but superficial: ‘Wuthering Heights’ reviewed
Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ had purists losing their minds from the get-go. They lost their minds at the casting –…
No chemistry between the performers: Arcadia at the Old Vic reviewed
The Old Vic’s production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard has a vital component missing. The house. Stoppard’s brilliant historical comedy…
