Addiction
Has gambling become the great British addiction?
When I was 14 my father took me to a bookmaker’s and encouraged me to place a bet. He wanted…
The scandal of OxyContin, the painkiller that caused untold pain
The Sacklers’ callous greed has unleashed a tsunami of pain, says Ian Birrell
Will Self’s memoir of drug addiction is a masterpiece of black humour
Well, it was always going to be called Will. More than once in this terrifying, terrific book, Will Self refers…
The screaming souls on London’s streets
When I first moved to London N1 four years ago, no one seemed to notice let alone discuss all the…
The untold story of Judy Garland
Judy Garland is now a myth, a paradigm and a warning: don’t let your daughter on the stage! It’s the…
![The First Opium War: The East India Company’s Nemesis and other boats destroy the Chinese war junks in Anson Bay, 7 January 1841 [Bridgeman Art Library]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/08/opiumwars.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
Global Britain was built as a narco-empire
China, wrote Adam Smith, is ‘one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious…
How to have your cake — and not eat it
Sitting at her desk at the BBC in March 2006, researching a documentary about the Olympic Games, Caroline Jones pressed…
Hitting rock bottom in LA
The title of this book tells you a lot. Jack Sutherland, who grew up in London and Los Angeles, worked…
Carly Simon: funniest, most sexually blunt star of her generation
I usually dread the final 15 minutes of a celebrity interview: the awkward section during which the writer must steer…
From Adrian Gill to A.A. Gill — with love and thanks
Often, Christmas is a time for moaning after the night before, when the seasonal drinking is remembered (if remembered at…
Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet is far too nice
You can’t play the part of Hamlet, only parts of Hamlet. And the bits Benedict Cumberbatch offers us are of…
My new addiction: road-building
Many years ago I was encouraged to read Roger Hutchinson’s Calum’s Road. The small and quirky book made a deep…
Smartphones are wonderful – until they take over your life
The smart phone is a wonderful thing. We are never out of touch anymore, neither with friends nor with the…
Giving up alcohol is not as much fun as I’d hoped
Two months ago, I set myself the target of losing 11 pounds in time for the Spectator’s summer party on…
Cybersex is a dangerous world (especially for novelists)
Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual…
The real reason there’s a queue outside the Cereal Killer Café
The Cereal Killer Café is a temple to cereal on Brick Lane, east London. It serves only cereal — and also…
Help me become an addict
When the White Queen told Alice she had sometimes believed as many as six contradictory things before breakfast, she spoke…
Why don’t more non-smokers try e-cigarettes?
I was waiting on an office forecourt recently puffing on an e-cigarette when a security guard came out. ‘You can’t…
The gambler’s daily grind
Lord Doyle is a shrivelled English gambler frittering away his money and destroying his liver in the casinos of Macau.…
