coronavirus
Which Covid vaccine is really the most effective?
State of the art Graffiti on Edvard Munch’s first version of ‘The Scream’ was revealed to be the work of…
Where will vaccine passports take us?
Desperate to find someone to commemorate with a statue for having done great things, but who isn’t a white male,…
The unintended consequences of the Macpherson report
Sir William Macpherson of Cluny has died. His obituaries praise him for his 1998 inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case.…
The case for immunity passports
For more than 20 years, I’ve been raging away at pointless rules. When my blood’s up, there’s not a foam-flecked…
Will freedom always be just over the horizon?
We should talk about horizons, and the setting of desirable ones. A newspaper gave it a go the other day…
The importance of a good funeral
A proper funeral is a great comfort
Do gender studies departments have a gender problem?
Target practice The government hit its target of giving a first Covid vaccine to 15 million of the most vulnerable…
Portrait of the week: Hotel quarantine starts, Ribblehead Viaduct cracks and a royal guest for Oprah
Home The target was achieved of vaccinating, by the middle of February, about 15 million people of 70 or over,…
The need for speed: can we outpace Covid?
Can we outpace Covid?
I’m living in a country that won’t let me out
Anyone who’s been through customs Down Under isn’t surprised by the region’s OTT response to Covid. Having been X-rayed before…
Portrait of the week: A royal baby, Boohoo buyouts and France legalises lunch al desko
Home On Sunday 7 February, as the week began, 11,465,210 people in the United Kingdom had received a first vaccination…
My palate and the plague
Later this week, on Spectator.co.uk, I will resolve a mystery that has featured in a lot of Zoom traffic around…
Covid is hastening the creep towards a cashless society
Covid is fuelling the anti-cash crusade
How chess got cool
How chess got cool
Trump is being defended by Foghorn Leghorn
We weren’t long into Bruce Castor’s opening speech defending Donald Trump in his impeachment trial before we knew it was…
Hancock launches his quarantine crackdown
The search for the right balance on border policy continues, as Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced this afternoon a host…
Secrets of the Vaccine Taskforce’s success
How the Vaccine Taskforce did it
The dark roots of ‘grim’
‘Thus I refute Bishop Berkeley,’ said my husband, multitasking by kicking the stone and slightly misquoting Samuel Johnson at the…
What if Covid had struck in the 1970s?
We have reached Covid-19’s first anniversary in the UK — and I really think we should do something fitting to…
The Fire Brigades Union’s pandemic response has been a disgrace
The Fire Brigades Union’s pandemic response has been a disgrace
Portrait of the week: Variants, vaccines and goodbye to Captain Sir Tom Moore
Home About 80,000 people in eight places in Surrey, London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Southport and Walsall were asked in door-to-door visits…
Quarantine heralds the death of Mid-Atlantic Man
As an ambitious journalist making my way in Fleet Street, I dreamed of becoming a Mid-Atlantic Man. Tom Wolfe came…
Portrait of the week: Vaccine battles, illegal haircuts and Biden’s chat with Boris
Home Supplies of the Pfizer vaccine (made in Belgium) were feared to be at risk from a declaration by the…
Are we returning to ‘normalcy’ or ‘normality’?
New normal Why have so many people started saying ‘normalcy’ rather than ‘normality’? — Normalcy has been traced back to…
‘Inessential’ workers have helped keep the country afloat
A common sight across Britain these past ten months has been those rainbow flags fluttering in urban and village streets:…
