Books
The wonder of Wodehouse
Everyone knows a Lord Emsworth. Mine lives south of the river and wears caterpillars in his hair and wine on…
Hogsflesh and herring
Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion, real name Bruce Frederick Cummings, earned his living measuring the legs of lice in the Natural…
Author’s notebook
To my surprise, what I miss most about life before the lockdown are parties. As others pine for restaurants and…
Human soup
The earliest depictions of the Americas were eye-popping, and shaped European art, says Laura Gascoigne
For now, age isn’t just a number
When I told my seven-year-old granddaughter, over Zoom, how much I missed being with her, I added: ‘Maybe it won’t…
Candid camera
William Boyd on the miraculous snaps of boy genius Jacques Henri Lartigue
Barometer
Admitting defeat 8 May is celebrated as VE Day, but it is also a date which marks a significant English…
The ridiculousness of the bookshelf police
‘People want to know why Michael Gove owns “racist” and “anti-Semitic” books’, reports the Independent’s website. By ‘people’ it actually…
Lockdown productivity? Let it go
On the day our A-level exams began some wit wrote on the blackboard: ‘I wasted time, and now doth time…
Letters
The closing of churches Sir: Stephen Hazell-Smith is quite right in writing that churches should re-open (Letters, 18 April), however…
On the contrary
The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby
An outbreak of bad manners
It all started on the day after the Brexit referendum. People who do not get the result they voted for…
The thrill of apocalypse
Something about the word ‘bomb’ has always thrilled me, and I know why. No school today. In the 1950s we…
‘Irish writers don’t talk to each other – they shout abuse’
Sebastian Barry talks to Robert Jackman about family folklore, the joy of writing playsand why he is not an ‘Irish’ novelist
Open book
If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read
Double agents and dog-ears
When will the definitive history of the modern Middle East be written? For 20 years and more, a continent has…
Lost in translation
You won’t find much Jane Austen in the myriad adaptations of her novels, says Claire Harman
Stranger things
Of all the many things I’ve learned from the radio so far this decade, the most deranging is that the……
Eggs and hard liquor: Spectator writers on their favourite examples of meals in literature
P.J. O’Rourke I love poems but hate poetasters, love wine but detest oenophiles, love food but can’t stand foodies. Therefore…
Beer, sweat and jockstraps: the real history of the CBSO
In childhood, the theme tune to The Box of Delights was the sound of Christmas. The melody was ‘The First…
The pleasures and perils of talking about art on the radio
‘I like not knowing why I like it,’ declared Fiona Shaw, the actress, about Georgia O’Keeffe’s extraordinary blast of colour,…
What really happened at Troy?
Heinrich Schliemann had always hoped he’d find Homer’s Troy. Although he had no archaeological background to speak of, he did…
How Nova revolutionised women’s magazines
Batsford has just brought out a huge tome on Nova — ‘one of the most influential magazines in history’ —…
God awful: BBC1’s His Dark materials reviewed
‘Here’s your new Sunday night obsession…’ the BBC announcer purred, overintoned and mini-orgasmed, like she was doing an audition for…
‘The only place I can’t get my plays on is Britain’: Sir Peter Brook interviewed
‘Everyone of us knows we deserve to be punished,’ says the frail old man before me in a hotel café.…
