Hospitals
Must my fish and chips come with a side of geopolitics?
‘Our boys went to Lebanon and trained Hezbollah!’ shouted the drunk Irish lad in the fish and chip shop as…
Speed traps are designed to make you fail
The builder boyfriend returned from a trip to London to inform me he was being done for speeding at 32mph,…
The £486 driving licence con
By changing the address on my driving licence, I was somehow signed up to something that began charging my credit…
Aren’t women wonderful?
The mole specialist was wearing a pink Chanel-looking suit and pink diamanté shoes. By mole specialist, I don’t mean someone…
Whatever happened to Lionel Shriver?
For many readers, my absence from these pages may have gone unnoticed. Those few who’ve detected my disappearance might have…
Why the baby doomers are wrong
Rarely does a piece of journalism bring a tear to my normally cynical eye, but I did find this happening…
In India, the Covid crisis has left us helpless and broken
We’re running out of beds, oxygen, medicines – and hope
Hospital wards are filling up again – with fakers
As Covid retreats, the malingerers are making a comeback
The horrifying toll of lockdown on the poor and mentally ill
I start the week with someone throwing faeces at me. I thought people were supposed to clap for doctors these…
Is the virus retreating?
Imperial College’s React study was in the news again this morning. The latest instalment swabbed 167,642 people between 6 and…
How the NHS has coped with the second wave
Across Europe, hospitals have been filling up again with the second wave of coronavirus. France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and the…
The genius of Alfred Hitchcock
Nobody earns the right to respect just by having lived into old age, whenever that begins — it has happened…
Is Bernie Ecclestone the world’s oldest father?
Game on A few things which are still going on, in spite of coronavirus: — Football in Belarus, where the…
Prue Leith: My carbon footprint should put me in jail
I made the mistake of saying I thought insects might help feed the world. They are high-protein, cheap to farm…
Prue Leith: My plan to get real catering back into hospitals
Picture the scene: we are filming the opening link for The Great British Bake Off. Here I am in the…
Haunting and hallucinatory: hospital poems from Hugo Williams
Hugo Williams’s wryly candid reports from the front lines of sex and family life are a perennial delight. Often timeless,…
Is modernist architecture unhealthy?
Architects and politicians have a lot in common. Each seeks to influence the way we live, and on account of…
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…
Vital signs
Exhibit A. It is 1958 and you are barrelling down a dual carriageway; the 70 mph limit is still eight…
A dispatch from a family of fooshers
I’d like this to have been one of those Spectator diaries that gives the ordinary reader a glimpse into the…
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…
What I learned while nearly dying
There’s some journalistic research you’d really never do by choice. Spending four days in an NHS hospital with a life-threatening…
The NHS has forgotten the art of a dignified death
Ten years ago, the National Health Service eased my father’s final days. My mother, this year, was not so lucky
Jeremy Hunt is spoiling for a fight. He’s picked the wrong one
Jeremy Hunt is right to fight for NHS reform. But he’s going after the wrong people, on the wrong issue
I’m a junior doctor and I used to trust the Tories. Not any more
Like many of my fellow junior doctors, I trusted a Conservative government with the NHS. If it’s to stay strong…
