First World War
High life
Athens This grimy semi-Levantine ancient city has its beauty spots, with childhood memories indelibly attached. There is a turn-of-the-century apartment…
Nobs and numbskulls
Suppose Charles were to reign as a meddlesome, self-pitying, indecisive plonker. It’s a thought. It’s now a play, too, by…
Doubting Thomas
Esther Freud wrote dazzlingly in the first person through the eyes of a five-year-old child in her first novel, Hideous…
Dance of death
The Imperial War Museum has reopened after a major refit and looks pretty dapper, even though it was overrun by…
Nursing on the front line
It’s the tub of bright red geraniums at the heart of the picture that startles. How did anyone have time…
Portrait of the week
Home The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge joined 50 heads of state at the St Symphorien cemetery near Mons to…
Letters
Poor treatment Sir: Jane Kelly’s article (‘No tea or sympathy’, 2 August) on the lack of empathy and emotional support…
Not even Turing deserves a posthumous pardon
Ross Clark is a columnist I try to read because he is never trite. So I was sorry to miss…
Out of this world
First, a confession. Even an ardent radio addict can enjoy a fortnight away from the airwaves, disconnected, switched off, unlistening.…
Diary
I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike…
Women at war
Sunday nights. What are they for? Eggs. Tea. Toast. Nerves about the week ahead. Something comforting on TV. But comfort…
The Spectator’s Notes
Thirty years ago this Saturday, I became editor of this magazine. In the same month, the miners’ strike began, Anthony…
Barometer
Years of war Imaginative souls have tried to compared the situation in Ukraine with that which preceded the first world…
Diary
São Paolo It was back in 2001 that my good friend Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym ‘Bric’,…
Letters
Caution over wind Sir: While the broadcast media have assailed their audiences with simplistic yet blanket coverage of the floods…
Misdirected rage
Here it is. Fifty years late. Oh What a Lovely War was originally staged at Stratford East in 1964. It…
The Spectator’s Notes
Last week, David Cameron said that we have ‘seven months to save the most extraordinary country in history’. He meant…
The 100-year plot
To understand the real meaning of the EU, you must grasp that it originated in the first world war, rather than the second
More blood and mud
Countless writers and film-makers this year will be trying their hand at forcing us to wake up and smell the…
Mint condition
New year new ideas as we woke up on Monday morning to find ourselves in Lagos with Evan Davies trying…
We will remember
Perhaps the most moving programme of all amid the huge range that will mark the coming centenary of the Great…
Diary
A year or so ago I was asked to sit on a committee that advises the government on how to…
Wrong track
So many of the world’s troubles, even today, can be traced back to the empire-builders of 1914 – and the peace-makers of 1919
For the fallen
We constantly need to be reminded that the consequence of war is death. In the case of the first world…
The Spectator’s Notes
As I write, the World Islamic Economic Forum is opening in London, the first time it has been held in…
