Health
My medical treatment is sending me bonkers – and it’s no fun
If I’ve been incredibly rude to you or snappy or tearful lately, if I’ve taken offence where none was intended,…
![British poet Salena Godden presenter of Mrs Death Misses Death on Radio 4. [Photo: Roberto Ricciuti / Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Radio.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Listening to people talking about death can be strangely consoling
‘Without death,’ says Salena Godden, ‘life would be a never-ending conveyor belt of sensation.’ For her death is what gives…
How does anyone manage to navigate the maze of our second-rate NHS?
Next month the National Health Service turns 70. The institution is greatly loved, and not for nothing. The fear of…
Farewell to a bottle and a half per day – I have finally embarked on a diet
Are there still travelling fairs? In many villages, they used to be part of the annual round. For weeks, the…
I’d rather be fat-shamed than have cancer
Sofie Hagen is a young Danish comic I admire. I didn’t see her most recent show, Dead Baby Frog, but…
Nine reasons to be cheerful this year
Since it’s the first week of the New Year I’m going to pretend the bad stuff isn’t happening and focus…
Dr Google’s verdict? Anthrax poisoning
Six months into the renovations and I have so much dust in my lungs I have had to give Stefano…
A book about sleep that will keep you up all night
I’ve read several books about sleep recently, and their authors all tell me the same three things. The first is…
Health and personal choice
Public health specialist Sir Michael Marmot has blamed ‘the cuts’ for the rise in dementia among the elderly, resulting in…
Great news for fatties: it’s really not your fault
I’ve noticed for some time now that thin people, genuinely slim ones, have a secret loathing of fatties. Kindly though…
Warning: top-performing funds are highly likely to contain tobacco
Axa will no longer invest in the tobacco industry: the French insurance giant will sell €184 million of shares and…
How your brain buys a sofa
Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly…
Vaping’s appeal isn’t about the nicotine. It’s about the gadgets
Probably you never visited the flats of middle-class student drug dealers in the 1990s, because crikey, neither did I, and…
In praise of doctors’ handwriting
My baby and I excel at blood tests. He (tiny, jaundiced) stretches out naked under the hospital’s hot cot-lamps like…
When novels kill
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
Stress point
It’s not work that’s killing us. It’s the irritation and confusion of modern office life
Diary
It’s clear that Vladimir Putin has had a facelift, which might explain why Wendi Deng would take an interest in…
How Seneca got to sleep
As if we did not have enough to cause us sleepless nights, the Royal Society for Public Health has demanded…
The Spectator’s notes
However wicked tax evasion is and however distasteful some tax avoidance may be, people should imagine a world without tax…
Live fast, die not too old
At 77, it is clear to me that increased longevity can be a curse rather than a blessing
Diary
I’d like this to have been one of those Spectator diaries that gives the ordinary reader a glimpse into the…
The brain-damage game
In most sports, injuries happen when things go wrong. In boxing, they’re the ultimate goal. It isn’t right
The scan said my baby wouldn’t live. It was wrong
When my unborn baby was a five-month-old fetus, twisting about in the internal dark, he was given a death sentence…
Barometer
Vote no, vote often David Cameron scorned Boris Johnson’s idea that voting to leave the EU might result in further…
What was this bed-blocker doing on my ward?
There’s some journalistic research you’d really never do by choice. Spending four days in an NHS hospital with a life-threatening…
