Beauty

Polite postmodernism: Burbridge Close, Dagenham, by Peter Barber Architects is a recent housing development for the elderly that Roger Scruton approves of

Here’s what I want from modern architecture, explains housing tsar Roger Scruton

23 February 2019 9:00 am

The creation of a commission to examine beauty in new building created a stir in the media, with the chairman…

Scourge of puritans: Christian Dior with model Sylvie, c.1948

How an anarchist music student become of the fashion greats: the life of Christian Dior

9 February 2019 9:00 am

Strange to think when you visit the Christian Dior show at the V&A that his time as designer was so…

Split decision

5 October 2017 2:00 pm

Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…

Le Clézio’s The Prospector: from tropical beaches to the trenches of the Somme

4 June 2016 9:00 am

It is not easy to avoid clichés when writing about J.M.G. Le Clézio. Born in Nice in 1940, the recipient…

Peter Phillips bids farewell to his music column after 33 years

7 May 2016 9:00 am

This, my 479th, is to be my last contribution as a regular columnist to The Spectator. I have written here…

Dear Mary: How can girls avoid freezing in cold marquees?

10 October 2015 9:00 am

Q. What do you do when you are so cold at a party that you cannot enjoy it? At a…

William Blake’s depiction of Urizen, creator and lawgiver

Is truth really beauty after all?

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Mediterranean crockery has a lot to answer for. It famously spoke thus to John Keats: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,…

Whose hair are you buying?

25 April 2015 9:00 am

British people buy £43 million worth of human hair a year. So who’s selling?