Journalism
My life as a writer
It was roughly 55 years ago, at the tail end of the 1960s, that I took the monumental decision to…
Stray shells and suicide bombers in Kabul’s finest hotel
Lyse Doucet describes how the Intercontinental, the journalists’ refuge for decades, is increasingly targeted by the Taliban as they gain control in Afghanistan
Sebastian Faulks looks back on youth and lost idealism
The novelist describes key moments in his life from boarding school onwards in essays originally intended to discuss ‘the things that have meant the most to me’
Julie Burchill, remembered
When I was told that a newspaper had asked someone to write my obituary, my first instinct was excitement. I’m…
How The Spectator shaped John Buchan
Amid the hullabaloo attending the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Buchan on 26 August – the walks and…
A sensory awakening: the adventures of a cheesemonger
The high-flying journalist Michael Finnerty takes a break in midlife to learn the art of cheesemaking in Borough Market – and finds himself fleeing a knife-wielding terrorist
My victory over Mohammed Hijab
One of the occupational hazards of being a journalist is being hounded by litigants. Indeed, one of the reasons why…
Why you should never trust a travel writer
After one of Jeffrey Archer’s minor tangles with the absolute truth, his friend the late Barry Humphries remarked: ‘We all…
How I got under Macron’s skin
The journalist Jonathan Miller, a cherished Spectator contributor, died last week at his home in Occitanie, France. Below is an…
Collateral damage: Vulture, by Phoebe Green, reviewed
Sarah Byrne is covering her first war, reporting from Gaza. But her pursuit of a scoop triggers a series of events that may haunt her forever
Tim Franks goes in search of what it means to be Jewish
In a thought-provoking family history, the BBC journalist addresses questions of identity – and to what extent we are products of our forebears
What Mark Twain owed to Charles Dickens
It wasn’t just Dickens’s stage performances and publishing ventures that fascinated Twain, but the witty, journalistic style, which he mimicked to great effect in early travel books
The unbearable smugness of American journalists
Polls occasionally appear which reveal the extent to which people trust – or rather don’t trust – journalists. In one…
Satire and settled scores: Universality by Natasha Brown reviewed
Skewering journalistic pretension to authority is the main business of a novel that contrives to be both viciously accurate and weirdly off the mark
Is Keir Starmer really Morgan McSweeney’s puppet?
Two lobby journalists portray the PM as the pawn of ‘the Irishman’ and as ‘a passenger on a train driven by others’ – but there is much more to Starmer than that
The exquisite vanity of the male sports writer
A good place to catch the highbrow sports journalist in action is the ‘Pseuds Corner’ column of PrivateEye, where he…
The unfulfilled life: Ask Me Again, by Clare Sestanovich, reviewed
Our aimless young heroine struggles to find herself in New York, Washington and Los Angeles – but even the novel’s inconclusiveness is compelling
Norman Lewis – a restless adventurer with a passion for broken-down places
John Hatt’s latest selection of the travel writer’s journalism includes articles on Castro’s Havana, the Yemen of the Imams, Batista’s Cuba, French Indo-China and Neapolitan men of honour
Scroll model: confessions of a clickbait writer
Working on a ‘trending’ news desk is the journalistic equivalent of being a battery-farmed hen. When I was still at…
Why won’t David Lammy help Jimmy Lai?
As I write, the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is flying to China. So I am only guessing when I say…
The journalist’s journalist: the irrepressible Claud Cockburn
After a distinguished spell on the Times, Cockburn launched The Week in 1933, whose scoops on Nazi Germany became essential reading for politicians, diplomats and journalists alike
Beware the ‘sourdough effect’
As the joke goes, there are two ways to become a top judge. You can study law at university, then…
My plans for The Spectator
Shortly after Boris Johnson was selected as the Conservative candidate for Henley, he invited me to lunch at The Spectator.…
The assassination of Georgi Markov bore all the hallmarks of a Russian wet job
The Bulgarian dissident sailed too close to the wind with his revelations about Tudor Zhivkov in 1978, provoking the dictator to enlist Russian help in eliminating him
If only Britain knew how it was viewed abroad
22 June 2024 9:00 am
If the country were a person, it would need its friends to sit it down and deliver it a few home truths about its damaging behaviour to itself and others, says Michael Peel