New York
Mamdani’s reparations talk is risible
When asked on The Root whether he’d support cash reparations for black New Yorkers, Mayor Mamdani said he wouldn’t rule it out:…
Legal organ harvesting is just a PR campaign away
Summertime, and the living isn’t as easy as it used to be. The dying, though, is getting easier, especially if…
New York crime caper: Cool Machine, by Colson Whitehead, reviewed
The violent black demi-monde of the 1980s is thrillingly evoked in this gritty finale to Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy
Trump is smoke-signaling with his forest fire tariff
The latest incursion into American airspace is forest fire smoke from Canada. An invasion, according to President Trump. And the…
The art of betrayal: Exhibition, by Alex Hyde, reviewed
Two young women artists in the 1990s collaborate in an affectionate, creative partnership – until one appropriates the other’s work and passes it off as her own
Why Jack Schlossberg lost
Jack Schlossberg was, until yesterday, a high-profile candidate in New York’s 12th congressional district who seemingly had everything you might…
Will Janeese Lewis George be the Zohran Mamdani of DC?
Eight months after New York handed City Hall to a democratic socialist, Washington, DC appears ready to follow suit. Janeese…
Trump or Hochul: who knows ball?
The New York Knicks clinched an NBA championship spot Monday – and President Trump shared his excitement over his home…
Was Marcel Duchamp’s notorious ‘Fountain’ even his own work?
The ‘readymade’ sculpture, signed R. Mutt, may have been the brainchild of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and only claimed by Duchamp after her death
The Mamdani idea of the British crown
Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York has faced what others might consider awkward moments in office, as when two Islamists, inspired by ISIS, tried to…
Farewell to the Calloways: See You on the Other Side, by Jay McInerney, reviewed
The final volume of the tetralogy sees the once glamorous literary couple now adrift in New York as the mood changes with Covid, #MeToo and identity politics
Defiantly creative to the end: the transgressive Dorothea Tanning
Born in Illinois in 1910 in the middle of a hurricane, the experimental Surrealist became the model of the fiercely independent artist
No good deed goes unpunished: A Better Life, by Lionel Shriver, reviewed
Kind, liberal Gloria Bonaventura opens her New York home to a young Honduran woman, but soon comes to regret the decision
Who’s the victim in Zohran Mamdani’s New York?
Mayor Zohran Mamdani made a hospital visit to comfort the victim of a knife attack on a police officer, who…
The genius of Morton Feldman
To accompany an exhibition of paintings by Philip Guston at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2004, a…
Maduro appears in NY court as Venezuela replaces him
There was no dancing, let alone prancing, in the Manhattan courtroom as former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was arraigned on…
Beware Mamdani’s ‘warmth of collectivism’
One of the things I admire about Zohran Mamdani is his candor. You know where you stand with him. Mamdani, who was…
Mayor Mamdani: South Africa is the model for New York
It was a performance worthy of an Oscar or maybe a Tony. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s address at his swearing in…
What links Jeffrey Dahmer to the Spice Girls?
The path that links the Spice Girls to Jeffrey Dahmer – necrophile mass murderer of at least 17 men –…
The Spectator state of mind
It is party time in New York as we toast the launch of The Spectator’s swish new office on Fifth…
Looking on in anger: Happiness and Love, by Zoe Dubno, reviewed
A nameless woman, joining former friends after a funeral, is left speechless with fury at their vanity and pretensions
Meet Zohran Mamdani, the man who will ruin New York
Manhattan The Friday before New York’s Democratic mayoral primary election, the 33-year-old candidate Zohran Mamdani walked the entire length of…
The fragility of the modern city reflects humanity’s vulnerability
The more complex the infrastructure, the more liable it is to break down – as was recently apparent in the blackout that brought Madrid and Lisbon to a standstill in April
‘The possibilities of paint are never-ending’: Sir Frank Bowling interviewed
‘I’m full of excitement waiting for this to dry out,’ Sir Frank Bowling exclaims. We are sitting in his studio,…
The sexual escapades of Edmund White sound like an improbably sordid Carry On film
The octogenarian writer seems unable to resist the burlesque, describing the most lurid encounters at an apparently droll remove
