Harold macmillan
Progress is destroying the planet: the rants of a self-hating American
Poverty is increasing and freedom contracting, says Samuel Miller McDonald – and exploitative white Americans, from Abraham Lincoln onwards, are largely to blame
A festering wound
Just as one is inclined to believe Carlyle’s point that the history of the world is but the biography of…
General de Gaulle’s advice to the young Queen Elizabeth
There were so many ear-catching moments in Peter Hennessy’s series for Radio 4, Winds of Change, adapted from his new…
When the Grand Design met ‘le Grand Non’: Britain in the early 1960s
Peter Hennessy is a national treasure. He is driven by a romantic, almost sensual, fascination with British history, culture, and…
Rab Butler was too indecisive (and badly dressed) to be Prime Minister
‘The best prime minister we never had’ is not an epithet exclusive to Rab Butler. Widely applied to the late…
Premier league
Where will David Cameron rank among Tory prime ministers?
Restoration drama
Yes William Cook Rejoice! Rejoice! Fifty-four years after its destruction, Euston Arch has returned to Euston. Well, after a fashion.…
Long life
I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like being a political leader. I find this difficult because I…
Punch and Judy politics
With the odd exception — I think principally of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher — the genre of political…
High life
Thick snow is falling hard and heavy, muffling sounds and turning the picturesque village postcard beautiful. I am lying in…
High life
To the grand Herrera house on the upper east side of Manhattan for lunch in honour of Lord and Lady…
The luckiest kids in history
The statistics speak for themselves. Today’s gilded generation is the most blessed that ever lived
Letters
On Benefits Street Sir: Fraser Nelson asserts that people in charities do not want to talk about what life is…
Home truths
Did Macmillan stitch up his succession – or did Iain Macleod’s famous Spectator piece, 50 years old this week, stitch up Macmillan?
Criminal damage
Anyone with a passing interest in old British buildings must get angry at the horrors inflicted on our town centres…
Rise of the man-hug
Have we gained from abandoning the handshake?
