Journalism
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
The joy of hanging out with artists
Lynn Barber finds painters and sculptors easily the most congenial people to interview - despite having received a death threat from the Chapman brothers
There are three sides to every story
The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who died last month aged 90, was perhaps most famous for his dictum that: ‘Nothing in…
A mother-daughter love story
In her latest memoir, Leslie Jamison describes her pregnancy, experience of childbirth and devotion to her baby, returning repeatedly to the dilemmas of a working mother
Literary fun and games
Academic jargon, back-scratching and literary scandals were all ripe for treatment in the long-running N.B. by J.C. column – now available in a glorious miscellany
Jan Morris’s ‘national treasure’ status is misleading
Almost two years after the death of Jan Morris, the jaunty travel writer and pioneer of modern gender transition, her…
A.N. Wilson has many regrets
‘Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.’ A.N. Wilson seems, on the surface, to have taken to heart…
There’s no such thing as an ‘ordinary Russian’
There was a whiteboard in the BBC Baghdad bureau for noting down phrases we hoped to ban from the airwaves.…
The price of courage: On Java Road, by Lawrence Osborne, reviewed
Lawrence Osborne’s novels are easy to admire. They tend to deal with characters trapped in morally questionable situations and their…
Fascinating exhibitions – clunky editorialising: Breaking the News at the British Library reviewed
In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…
In praise of amateurs
Two weeks ago in St Moritz I ran into both Nicolas Niarchos and Nikolai von Bismarck, two talented young men…
Mexico is no country for journalists
I’m writing this on my last day in Mexico City, having accompanied my 18-year-old daughter here for the first week…
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