Middlemarch
Public lies and secret truths
Smith’s sweeping historical novel spans slavery in Jamaica in the 1770s and the marathon trials of the Tichborne Claimant in London a century later
The real deal – or not
One of the stranger things that happened in the period just before lockdown was the sudden disappearance of audiences from…
On the contrary
The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby
Pornographer-in-Chief
What does Andrew Davies have to say to those who accuse him of gratuitous rumpy-pumpy in his adaptations of the classics? Stephen Smith finds out
From horses to glasses
A stint in dry dock — the ‘dry’ literally — has one advantage. There is time for lots of long…
