IRA
Why are we allowing ourselves to be held to ransom by has-been Irish militants?
When politics goes round in circles, the columnist inevitably revisits issues that would have been sorted if only everyone read…
Did Ed Balls mean to make a documentary on the joys of Trump’s America?
The thing I most regret having failed ever to ask brave, haunted, wise Sean O’Callaghan when I last saw him…
Put out the fires
Few events have appalled London liberals so publicly as the surprise emergence of the ten MPs of the Democratic Unionist…
Letting terror win
Publicity and panic make us all accessories to jihadi murders
A step too far
Captain Robert Nairac was a Grenadier Guards officer serving in Northern Ireland when on 14 May 1977 he was abducted…
Charles Moore’s Notes: If we want to save the elephant, we must legalise the ivory trade
How good a deal for Britain is it that the president of China got a state visit and a nuclear…
Colm Tóibín on priests, loss and the half-said thing
Jenny McCartney talks to unstoppable literary force Colm Tóibín about loss, priests and half-said things
The spies we left in the cold
Is MI5 neglecting its duty towards ex-informers?
Words on war
It’s really hard to imagine now a world before 24-hour news, continually and constantly accessible in a never-ending stream of…
Teenage terrors
One of the great moments of my student life was opening the door and seeing visitors step back, shocked. I’d…
There’s no substitute for human intelligence
Spying may be one of the two oldest professions, but unlike the other one it has changed quite a lot…
Filling in the blanks
‘So — take heart,’ said Alan Bennett, sending us out from his play, Cocktail Sticks, on a cheery note. The…
Sister act
She was the sequinned star of the airwaves back in the 1920s, the first preacher to realise the potential of…
The wolf in all of us
I had an interesting discussion with my friend Aidan Hartley earlier this week about whether the young men fighting for…
Ukraine vs Sparta
As rebels, terrorists, fascists, foreign forces, activists, separatists, militants, militias, nationalist groups, Neo-Nazis, Right Sector forces — take your pick — spread…
The Spectator’s Notes
‘Twenty-six million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after?’ asks the Ukip poster for…
