Airports

Why I was almost thrown out of South Africa

28 May 2022 9:00 am

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

10 February 2021 1:34 am

The search for the right balance on border policy continues, as Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced this afternoon a host…

Who is most likely to be killed by police in the US?

13 June 2020 9:00 am

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

22 June 2019 9:00 am

My first award for intelligent design this week goes to Dublin airport for displaying a sign which reads ‘Lounges. Turn…

In 1985 it was ‘the most expensive building ever built’: HSBC’s Hong Kong headquarters designed by Norman Foster

From Stansted to corporate swank: superstructuralism has a lot to answer for

7 April 2018 9:00 am

Amid the thick of the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale dispatched a plea to the Times deploring the lethal conditions of…

What makes Argos worth £1.4 billion? I reckon I know

9 April 2016 9:00 am

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

24 October 2015 9:00 am

The Great British Runway final between Heathrow and Gatwick is beginning to look like a game of two halves. The…

The good economic news that we forgot in the China panic

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Home from the hot Aegean, huddled by the fire as rain ruins the bank holiday weekend, I’m thinking: what gloom…

Would the return of the drachma mean a bonanza for banknote printers?

4 July 2015 9:00 am

Bank job Should we buy shares in companies which print banknotes in expectation of one getting to print millions of…

Airport wars: why I'm betting on Gatwick

4 April 2015 9:00 am

Easter is a good time to talk about airports — or perhaps a bad time, if you bought your Spectator…

The charming little airport that ruins thousands of holidays

10 January 2015 9:00 am

The charming little airport that ruins thousands of skiing holidays

Joan Collins’s diary: The joy of fake Christmas trees

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Every year Christmas comes earlier and earlier in America. Cards, baubles and imitation trees were being sold in the big…

Have the people who design trains and airports noticed that laptops exist?

6 December 2014 9:00 am

It’s taken years to work this out, but there is a subtle art to designing an airport lounge. 1) Install…

What you’re missing now that you don’t read this in print

15 November 2014 9:00 am

The internet is a frighteningly efficient place for hunter-gathering – but the pleasures of undirected browsing are harder to find online

Panic about Ebola in Africa – not here

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Got Ebola yet? Early symptoms are very difficult to distinguish from either winter flu or, indeed, a particularly bad hangover.…

Rona Fairhead will be good for the BBC – but who was so keen to nobble her rival?

6 September 2014 9:00 am

Hats off to Rona Fairhead, the former Financial Times executive who will succeed Lord Patten as chairman of the BBC…

Radek Sikorski's diary: Show Putin what you think of him – eat a Polish apple

16 August 2014 9:00 am

I made a welcome escape from sweltering Warsaw to the cloudy cool of Bodø, halfway up the coast of Norway,…

Adam Smith is the father of more than one sort of economics

5 July 2014 9:00 am

Gandhi would test his resolve by sleeping between two naked virgins, an avenue not really open to me, as my…