Books
My picks for Cheltenham and the Twelve
With farmers outraged, the nation’s biggest employers warning the Budget will bring increased prices and lost jobs and growth out…
What will become of George Orwell’s archives?
The news that a vast cache of material by and concerning George Orwell is about to be cast to the…
Why children have stopped reading
It’s only when you read the old stories again, to a child maybe, that you become aware of the extent…
Who is your favourite character in children’s literature?
Rod Liddle Rabbits, always rabbits. I remember at age 13 forcing my poor parents to trudge despondently across hilly downland…
The rise of the competitive book list
I’m a hopeless technophobe. I dislike the stylish laptop I’m using and its subdued pad pad pad. I still long…
Rushdie on how the best magical realism transcends fantasy
Ask the man in the street to quote a line from one of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and he might struggle.…
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of…
Comedy of the blackest kind: Boy Parts, at Soho Theatre, reviewed
There’s something mesmerising about watching a good mimic. And Aimée Kelly, who plays fetish photographer Irina Sturges in Soho Theatre’s…
All that remains
Barnaby Rogerson on how his collaboration with a great photographer has brought the ancient world very close
Down the rabbit hole
Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter
Back to black
Michael Hann on the most enduring of pop subcultures
The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism
The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity…
A feast for the eyes
Jonathan Meades on the art of menus
A call to arms
I’ve agreed to interview the author and journalist Andrew Doyle about his new book at the Conservative party conference –…
Caught in the Mittel
Joseph Roth’s writing about interwar Europe speaks to present-day Ukraine
Salman Rushdie overcame his fear
After Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Muslims to kill him for publishing The Satanic Verses in 1989, Julian Barnes gave Salman Rushdie…
The tiger who came for me
What we can learn from Jim Corbett’s big-cat tales
On the same page
In the West End of London there is an alley which insinuates its way between the Charing Cross Road and…
The Spectator’s Notes
I wrote recently elsewhere about Jeremy Hunt’s good new book examining unnecessary deaths in the NHS. Someone should write a…
My Sally Rooney conversion
I tried to dislike the writing of Sally Rooney. But I failed. I retain some resistance to Sally Rooney the…
‘I came, I saw, I scribbled’
Graeme Thomson talks to former Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan about his first art folio
Don’t frighten the horses
Chivalry – written by and starring Sarah Solemani and Steve Coogan – is a comedy drama about post-#MeToo Hollywood life.…
Rebel yell
Ordinarily, if a podcast purports to be revelatory, you can assume it is anything but. There’s a glut of programmes…
