Journalism
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…
Why we still need the BBC
The BBC must ask itself if Nadine Dorries has a point
Anthony Holden is nostalgic for journalism’s good old bad old days
After a career spanning 50 years, 40 books and about a million parties, Anthony Holden has written a memoir. Based…
The stories that are too good to check
Last weekend, Rolling Stone ran a story about an interview an emergency room doctor had given to a local news…
A brief history of harlots
I write this as a follow-up to last week’s essay on muzzling after making whoopee. I’m on my way to…
How I missed the Matt Hancock story
How I missed the Hancock story
What would ‘sensitivity readers’ have made of my student scoops?
‘Whatever you do, don’t call them snowflakes,’ Caroline said the last time I spoke to Oxford students. ‘That’s not a…
The Sun goes down
Where did it all go wrong for the Sun?
Out-scooping the men: six women reporters of the second world war
Two war correspondents were hitching a lift towards Paris in August 1944 when a sudden wave of German bombers forced…
The problem with Equity’s anti-racism guidelines
‘Rouse tempers, goad and lacerate, raise whirlwinds.’ Those were the words that Kenneth Tynan, the most celebrated drama critic of…
One of the lucky ones: Hella Pick escapes Nazi Germany
Hella Pick is one of that vanishing generation of Jewish refugees who arrived in Britain on the eve of the…
The dangers of televising lobby briefings
The dangers of televising lobby briefings
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