Christmas
Four-nations Christmas Covid truce hangs in balance
It’s become a regular refrain to hear that Brexit talks have been extended. Now the same applies to negotiations over…
Real life
Now that our social lives are a Venn diagram that only mathematicians can understand I am officially becoming a recluse.…
Melania’s au revoir to Christmas
Washington DC It’s still dark outside and dumping rain as the media waits for the annual White House Holiday Decor…
Barometer
Gloss over Should we be worried that the head of research into respiratory drugs at AstraZeneca is called Dr Pangalos,…
Dear Mary
Q. For many years my boss gave each member of his small team a very generous Christmas gift voucher from…
Portrait of the week
Home The AstraZeneca vaccine developed by the University of Oxford was found to be 70 per cent effective — 90…
Open season
Anything goes with Advent calendars
Bad tidings
I was dreaming of a cancelled Christmas
You can’t cancel Christmas, stupid
You may have seen this interesting exchange on CNN between ‘America’s top infectious diseases expert’ Dr Anthony Fauci and CNN…
Backsliding on a lockdown end-date has begun already
Will England’s lockdown end on 2 December? Even before this morning’s media round there was good reason to suspect it…
‘The Melania Tapes’ reveal she’s even cooler than we thought
Just a couple of hours before President Trump announced that he and his wife, first lady Melania, had tested positive…
I spent Christmas Day helping the homeless – and I was bored out of my mind
When I told friends that I would be spending Christmas Day helping the homeless at a Crisis at Christmas centre…
My recipe to cure a hangover
Journalists exaggerate, often reaching for superlatives to chronicle mildly interesting events. Even so, there are times when it is necessary…
What did psychics predict was going to happen in 2019?
Bah humbug Some of the things reported to have been banned this Christmas: — Mulled wine banned from being sold…
Letters: Should conservatives be worried that high-spending Boris has a majority?
My father’s imprisonment Sir: Harald Maass’s piece on the plight of Uyghurs in China (‘A cultural genocide’, December 14) captures…
Neil Woodford could do the washing-up at my fantasy Christmas lunch
It’s the season for kindness and conviviality. In that spirit — and recognising that business, like personal life, rarely follows…
The best Christmas gift you can give yourself is to learn some poetry by heart
Every Christmas I find I am living in the past. I blame my father. He was born in 1910 —…
The King of Christmas: A short story by Owen Matthews
The Christmas King steps slowly from his house and sniffs the evening’s chill. His tread is dainty, for all his…
Away from the manger: the holy relics of Bethlehem
‘No crib for a bed,’ says ‘Away in a Manger’ rather puzzlingly, since a crib is a manger. ‘No one…
Gay giraffes and dead in ditches: The Spectator 2019 quiz
They said it In 2019, who said: 1. ‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood.’ 2. ‘I didn’t sweat…
Christmas with my brother
Ever since I was a child, I’ve associated Christmas with my mentally disabled brother Chris. Technically, he’s my half-brother —…
Christmas without God in the Appalachians
Christmas: without being grand and Proustian, this is a season when time present inevitably takes one back to time past.…
Andrew Sullivan: The evidence against Trump is overwhelming
When people ask me what the mood is in DC these days, the only word I can come up with…
The unwritten rules of sending Christmas cards
No one sends Christmas cards any more. Except that I do, and you might, and a few other people do…
Trump’s 19ft Christmas tree and 300lb gingerbread house are quintessentially American
The most obnoxious advert on American television this Christmas season features a thirtyish man telling his wife he ‘got us…
