Airports
A shortage of Nigels and other calamities: humorous stocking-fillers
Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Stuart Heritage and Rob Orchard, among others, explore the mysteries and frustrations of modern life
Airport officials are on a power trip
On my 2 p.m. arrival for a week-long work trip to South Africa a fortnight ago, an immigration agent flapped…
Hancock launches his quarantine crackdown
The search for the right balance on border policy continues, as Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced this afternoon a host…
Barometer
The Colston chronicles Who, exactly, was Sir Edward Colston? Colston was born into a family of merchants and spent the…
The service station problem: it’s becoming impossible to correct a mistake
My first award for intelligent design this week goes to Dublin airport for displaying a sign which reads ‘Lounges. Turn…
From Stansted to corporate swank: superstructuralism has a lot to answer for
Amid the thick of the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale dispatched a plea to the Times deploring the lethal conditions of…
My tip for the next cool shop: Argos
When I was at school in the 1970s, some of the richer kids would come back from their summer holidays…
Heathrow’s third runway could still be halted – here’s how
The Great British Runway final between Heathrow and Gatwick is beginning to look like a game of two halves. The…
Cheer up: we’re robust enough to withstand a shock from China
Home from the hot Aegean, huddled by the fire as rain ruins the bank holiday weekend, I’m thinking: what gloom…
Barometer
Bank job Should we buy shares in companies which print banknotes in expectation of one getting to print millions of…
A view from the departure lounge: why Heathrow expansion may never happen
Easter is a good time to talk about airports — or perhaps a bad time, if you bought your Spectator…
Flying shame
The charming little airport that ruins thousands of skiing holidays
Diary
Every year Christmas comes earlier and earlier in America. Cards, baubles and imitation trees were being sold in the big…
Have airport designers noticed that laptops exist?
It’s taken years to work this out, but there is a subtle art to designing an airport lounge. 1) Install…
The lost pleasures of reading a proper newspaper
The internet is a frighteningly efficient place for hunter-gathering – but the pleasures of undirected browsing are harder to find online
We should worry about Ebola in Africa, not here
Got Ebola yet? Early symptoms are very difficult to distinguish from either winter flu or, indeed, a particularly bad hangover.…
Applause for the Beeb’s new leading lady – but did the male runner-up deserve such a kicking?
Hats off to Rona Fairhead, the former Financial Times executive who will succeed Lord Patten as chairman of the BBC…
Diary
I made a welcome escape from sweltering Warsaw to the cloudy cool of Bodø, halfway up the coast of Norway,…
Adam Smith vs the measurebators
Gandhi would test his resolve by sleeping between two naked virgins, an avenue not really open to me, as my…
