Mexico
Does running 42 Lakeland fells in less than 24 hours really bring ‘serenity’?
The Keswick hotelier Bob Graham achieved this in 1932 – and nowadays running improbable distances is considered almost normal, as well as an important factor in mental wellbeing
The long history of kidnapping Latin American chieftains
One of the few benefits of being an anthropologist is the uncanny exhilaration one feels watching novel current events as…
A portrait of alienation: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai, reviewed
Two lovers from wealthy families in Allahabad contend with powerful forces of ambition, corruption, neighbouring feuds and sexual violence
Why was this fêted Mexican painter left out of the canon?
Think of a Mexican painting, and chances are you’ll conjure up an image of an eyebrow-knitted Frida Kahlo, or a…
Why has Leonora Carrington still not had a big exhibition?
‘It had nothing to endow it with the title of studio at all,’ was Edward James’s first impression of Leonora…
Mother of mysteries: Rosarita, by Anita Desai, reviewed
On a break in Mexico, a young Indian woman is regaled with stories of her mother’s past by a total stranger. But is it all a con?
On the road with Danny Lyon
The celebrated photojournalist describes his peripatetic youth recording revolution in Haiti, hunger and homelessness in Mexico and the civil rights movement in the US
How ever did the inbred Habsburgs control their vast empire?
For centuries, a line of mentally retarded monarchs managed extraordinary feats of engineering across the world against all odds
Fast and furious: America Fantastica, by Tim O’Brien, reviewed
As the avalanche of lies issuing from the White House morphs into the pandemic, Covid becomes in an engine of justice in this rollicking satire on Trumpworld
Jesus returns
Some years ago, Mark Millar (the creator of Kick-Ass, Kingsman, etc.) hit on yet another brilliant conceit for one of…
Feasts and fabrications
Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade
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…
The great rule breaker
Philip Hensher describes D.H. Lawrence’s restless search of a new way of life
A fatal clash of civilisations
Many books claim to describe junctures that changed the world but few examine ones as consequential as Conquistadores: A New…
You can’t own stories
Readers of The Spectator who keep up with the latest literary hissy fits could have predicted (perhaps with a groan)…
Donald Trump’s one-front trade war
At 12:01 a.m. on Monday, President Donald Trump went a long way toward defusing a potential war – not with…
Love in a time of people-trafficking: Among the Lost, by Emiliano Monge, reviewed
From the very first pages of Among the Lost, we’re engaged, and compromised. Estela and Epitafio are our main anchors,…
![Nothing much happens, yet there is so much to watch: Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma. [Photograph: Carlos Somonte/Netflix]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/8Decfilm.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Nothing much happens, yet there’s so much to watch: Roma reviewed
Roma is the latest film from Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity,Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and…
Mass immigration has destroyed hopes of a borderless society
What kind of a president would build a wall to keep out families dreaming of a better life? It’s a…
How good a painter was Frida Kahlo?
In 2004 Mexican art historians made a sensational discovery in Frida Kahlo’s bathroom. Inside this space, sealed since the 1950s,…
Poverty + anarchy + drug dollars = Mexico
You may not have heard of the Maras. Or Barrio 18. Or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or the Zatas,…
One holy mess
This novel, John Irving’s 14th, took the sheen off my Christmas, and here are the reasons. The comments on…
The murderous gangs who run the world
Rosalio Reta was 13 years old when recruited by a Mexican drug cartel. He was given a loyalty test —…
Mexican wave
Tours that start in Mexico have a nasty habit of repeating on one. Of all the British groups touring in…
The problem with trying to resuscitate dying languages
Samantha Ellis 9 March 2024 9:00 am
Ross Perlin is determined to support the ‘last speakers’ of endangered tongues, such as Seke. But if these speakers really are the last, they are not, in any real sense, speaking