lockdown
I was right – and Gove was wrong – on lockdown
In an otherwise excellent article for the Sunday Telegraph last week about our government’s hopeless pandemic response, Dan Hannan made…
Reversing our economic decline is not easy, but it is simple
We are becoming poorer because we keep choosing to increase spending, taxes and debt, rather than incurring any short-term discomfort, argues Jon Moynihan
Rumpelstiltskin retold: Alive in the Merciful Country, by A.L. Kennedy, reviewed
A group of idealistic activists is betrayed by a charismatic newcomer who dazzles with skill and charm – and gets away with murder. Repeatedly
‘I was much more disposable than I believed’: an interview with Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson is enjoying himself back at The Spectator. ‘My place of former employment,’ the former editor booms as he…
How would we handle an avian flu pandemic?
Concerns have been raised in recent months after an outbreak of avian flu caused by the virus H5N1 was detected…
Musings in lockdown: The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez, reviewed
Marooned in Manhattan with a stoned student and precocious parrot for company, our elderly narrator despairs of the novel’s future when life is so much stranger than fiction
Ménage à trois: Day, by Michael Cunningham, reviewed
When Dan, his wife Isabel and her brother Robbie decide to spend lockdown together, claustrophobic domesticity develops into a painful love triangle
Sex and the Famous Five
Before drawing tenuous comparisons between Enid Blyton and David Bowie, Nicholas Royle invites us to consider the erotic potential of Timmy the dog
TikTok is giving our children Tourette’s
The pandemic has hit our children even harder than we thought
Covid and the politics of panic
It is 15 months since Sweden’s Coronavirus Commission presented its final report. The 770-page document analysed how the country handled…
Who gets to decide what is ‘harmful’?
Three years ago this week marked my first misgivings about the government’s Covid lockdown. Sure, I was late to that…
Communing with an ancestor
Ian Marchant, diagnosed with cancer in 2020, takes comfort from his ancestor’s diary (1714-28), recording a full life as farmer and mainstay of his parish
Liz Truss can’t ignore the issue of NHS reform
It’s hard to think of any Prime Minister who has entered office surrounded by such low expectations. Liz Truss was…
Letters: Why we obeyed lockdown
Why we allowed it Sir: In her article ‘Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?’ (3 September), Lionel Shriver partially answers…
Vaccines disguised the errors of our lockdown policy
Liz Truss’s statement that she would never authorise another lockdown and The Spectator’s interview with Rishi Sunak have triggered a…
Letters: Lockdown saved lives
Lockdown saved lives Sir: Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown (‘The lockdown files’, 27 August)…
Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?
Last week’s Spectator interview with Rishi Sunak conveyed the anti-science ‘science’, the paucity of even fag-packet cost-benefit analysis and the…
How science became politicised
Here’s a paradox. Over the past two-and-a-half years, a cadre of senior politicians and their ‘expert’ advisers across the world…
What Rishi Sunak gets wrong about lockdown
Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown in last week’s Spectator interview – one echoed by…
We’re at pandemic levels of death. Why is no one talking about it?
At the peak of the lockdowns, thousands were dying every week. Newspaper front pages demanded action. But in the latest…
Bloated waffle: Jitney at the Old Vic reviewed
The Old Vic’s new show, Jitney, has a mystifying YouTube advert which gives no information about the play or the…
Sheila Hancock takes pride in her irascibility
This book begins with Sheila Hancock wondering why she is being offered a damehood. I must say I slightly wondered…
Welcome to the age of post-Covid nihilism
Washington, DC Amid the recent orgy of violence across America, it was the carjackings that finally got me. Lost amid all…
Boris Johnson’s guilt
An ability to survive narrow scrapes has been one of Boris Johnson’s defining qualities. The pictures of Downing Street’s lockdown…
What’s really behind the Tories’ present woes?
Philip Hensher 25 May 2024 9:00 am
Geoffrey Wheatcroft identifies two root causes: the disastrous revision of the leadership election procedure, and David Cameron’s turn to the referendum as a device to govern