Greece
Athens
My first visit to Athens as a student gave me a set of impressions that the present crisis has only…
High life
The secret of eternal youth, according to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, is arrested development, and the penny dropped last week. The…
Diary
It’ll be a Skype interview, says the producer from Greek television, and not live. In TV-speak that usually means not…
Let Greece go
To listen to Greek government ministers addressing the outside world during their breaks from negotiations with eurozone leaders this week,…
Put the water cannons on standby and your money on a swift Grexit
‘Will Greece exit the eurozone in 2015?’ Paddy Power was pricing ‘yes’ at 3-to-1 on Tuesday, with 5-to-2 on another…
High life
I hate to start with a cliché, but Count Arnaud de Borchgrave d’Altena, who died in Washington DC last week,…
High life
The good news is that a Greek suppository is about to relieve the EU’s economic constipation. The bad is that…
Portrait of the week
Home Party leaders mercilessly launched 100 days of campaigning before the general election on 7 May. David Cameron, the Conservative…
Diary
Dry January is tougher than it sounds. Well, for me anyway. It’s now been some 28 days since I’ve had…
Greek tragicomedy
The German chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed her desire for Greece to remain part of the European ‘story’. Since Greeks…
Austerity really is a virtue, whatever the Greeks think
The only question I remember from my Oxford moral philosophy paper was ‘What is integrity and is it a virtue?’…
The great European revolt
For Angela Merkel, it’s a crisis. For David Cameron, it’s an opportunity
How Greek voters will decide Britain’s general election
Before the eurozone crisis, Greek elections didn’t receive much attention in Westminster. At the moment, however, the polls from Athens…
This time round, the eurozone looks robust enough to get rid of its Greek problem
Ever since European Central Bank president Mario Draghi declared himself ready, in July 2012, ‘to do whatever it takes to…
Bear market
The West will have to drop sanctions on Russia – or face another global economic crash
Diary
It was quite fun being named as the new writer of 007 — although actually I’d make a lousy spy.…
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…
Sharp observation skills
Last year in Athens, rumours raced about Rachel Cusk’s creative writing classes at the British Council. Some of the (mostly…
Poet, priest and life-enhancer
Hilaire Belloc was once being discussed on some television programme. One of the panellists was Peter Levi. The other critics…
High life
Porto Cheli Nothing is moving, not a twig nor a leaf, and I find myself missing the cows, the mountains…
High life
Porto Cheli I have been thinking about my children and my own strange boyhood as I gaze up at the…
Beware of Brits bearing arms
Twenty-odd years ago, while on holiday in the deep Mani at the foot of the Peloponnese, I got into conversation…
‘Tell it not in the future’
Sam Leith finds the most sacred site of Ancient Greece still a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
The Spectator’s Notes
There has not been much good news out of Greece since the eurozone powers decided to crush the country, but…
The last hurrah
Sound the trumpets. Let rip the Byzantine chorus of clattering bells and gongs, the thunder of cannons, drums and flashing…
