France
The murder of Lola and the failure of Marconism
Last Friday, a beautiful 12-year-old Paris girl named Lola failed to come home from middle school. Later that evening, her…
My battle with an ant
At eight o’clock in the morning a nurse injected me with a radioactive marker and told me to go away…
My three-night retreat with the nuns
We were four round the little table in the nunnery kitchen: a 90-year-old German lady and her man; a nun…
Marine Le Pen wants France to become the next Sweden
While Emmanuel Macron spent Sunday in London honouring the memory of the late Queen Elizabeth, Marine Le Pen marked her…
The inconvenient truth about France’s forest fires
Montpellier Last month the Prime Minister of France, Elisabeth Borne, visited the south-west of the country to offer her support…
Zemmour is his own worst enemy
Eric Zemmour is back. The bogeyman of French politics spent the summer licking his wounds after his far-right Reconquest party…
What kompromat does Trump have on Macron?
Did Donald Trump have kompromat on Emmanuel Macron within the secret files seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago Xanadu?…
Could Macron trigger British blackouts?
‘We are living the end of an era of abundance,’ according to Emmanuel Macron, ‘the end of the abundance of…
Europe’s new migrant crisis
Earlier this month I spent a week in Sicily, driving south from Palermo to Agrigento and then east to Syracuse…
Why was Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s beautiful wife, so reviled?
On 15 June 1645, as Thomas Fairfax’s soldiers picked over the scattered debris on the Naseby battlefield, they made a…
What’s the point of the NHS if it doesn’t work?
We left prepared. Bottles of water, protein snacks, phone chargers, portable Scrabble (even the teenagers can look at the internet…
Liberté, égalité, nudité: France’s new sexual politics
France’s new sexual politics
Europe’s looming energy wars
This summer marks a truce. But if, as expected, Liz Truss becomes prime minister, it is almost inevitable that tensions…
My debt to Boris Johnson
Back in 1997 when I was narked on by a fellow journalist (Simon Walters, currently of the Times, then of…
The hidden benefit of an electric car
Hello, and welcome to episode one of What’s in My Frunk?, the first in an occasional Spectator series of news…
The joy of a children’s choir
All afternoon I had been horizontal next to an electric fan, sometimes sleeping, sometimes awake and sometimes halfway between those…
Macron’s Russian oil plan is bound to fail
It will drain Vladimir Putin of funds for his war machine. It will bring down inflation. And it might even…
In praise of a solidly, wonderfully French hotel
Nothing in the beach hotel was made of plastic. It wasn’t advertised as being a plastic-free hotel, but we noticed…
Don’t bet against Emmanuel Macron
It’s nice to be back on the old continent again, especially after getting within a couple of hundred yards of…
Boris is falling into the Macron trap
You can’t blame Boris Johnson for jetting off to Kyiv last week for another meet-and-greet session with Volodymyr Zelensky. He…
Could Macron lose his majority?
Last night was a poor one for the President. His Ensemble coalition appear neck and neck with La Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique…
Macron vs the deep state
French diplomats are on strike today. But will anyone notice? Not to be immodest, I am especially well qualified to…
Blair is wrong: the future of Britain shouldn’t involve Macron
Tony Blair believes the way forward for Britain is to seek guidance from Emmanuel Macron. The former British prime minister…
How far will house prices fall?
‘Forecasting is a mug’s game’ is a truism attributed to everyone from fantasy author Douglas Adams to former Bank of…
Operation Chariot succeeded because it was unthinkable
Eighty years ago, just after midnight on 28 March 1942, the British destroyer HMS Campbeltown crept up the estuary of…
