Satire
‘The Middlesbrough Shakespeare’: Why I loved Rod
I met Rod 22 years ago this month. We had been selected as team-mates on a gameshow pilot, and, halfway…
‘I asked for a substitute for the f-word. He suggested the c-word’: the joy of editing Rod
It was in Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where I was sitting waiting for the judge’s verdict, that I decided I needed…
Good riddance, Rod
When a famous right-wing, straight white male dies, if your first instinct isn’t to gloat and trash his reputation then…
To be a Spectator reader was to love Rod
Since becoming Spectator editor there was one observation I heard more often from readers than any other: ‘Rod is the…
The finest vacuum-cleaner romance you will see
A Useful Ghost is the best sex-with-a-vacuum-cleaner film I’ve seen in a while – or perhaps ever. It is deeply…
Nothing can save Rosebush Pruning
Rosebush Pruning is one of those films where you’ll say to yourself at the end: what the hell have I…
In the dazzling company of Alexander Pope and friends
For three months in Twickenham in 1726, Pope and his guests John Gay and Jonathan Swift worked on their satirical masterpieces while entertaining each other with their repartee
Big Mistakes is hysterical – but not in a good way
When following up a successful sitcom, should a writer head off into new territory or not? That was the question…
Blockchain fantasies: My Bags Are Big, by Tibor Fischer, reviewed
Everyone in Dubai’s confected utopia is reinventing themselves and failing miserably in this dark satire on greed, stupidity and regret
Ghastly middle-class materialism: The Quantity Theory of Morality, by Will Self, reviewed
Self’s latest satire suggests that a world where the avaricious prosper, and the meek inherit the debts of the unscrupulous, contains a limited amount of morality
Revelling in reading: The Enchanting Lives of Others, by Can Xue, reviewed
A group of young fiction enthusiasts and intellectuals channel their energies into devouring novels – and marvel at how enlightened it makes them feel
A satirical masterpiece: Blinding, by Mircea Cartarescu, reviewed
Bucharest is transformed into a phantasmic playground in this surreal take on Romania’s horrific recent history
Noah Baumbach needs to try harder: Jay Kelly reviewed
Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly stars George Clooney as a handsome movie star playing a handsome movie star who has an…
The demise of South Park
President Trump has a very small willy. His boyfriend is Satan. He’s a con man who will sue you for…
An unlikely alliance: Drayton and Mackenzie, by Alexander Starritt, reviewed
Two university contemporaries with next to nothing in common find themselves working together to disrupt electricity generation with a scheme to turn tidal power into light
A small world: Shibboleth, by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, reviewed
A satire on Oxford university life points up ideological tensions, the pettiness of college politics and the patronising ways of the young and privileged
Excruciating: Sirens reviewed
You had a narrow escape this week. I was about to urge you to watch Sirens, the latest iteration of…
Satire and settled scores: Universality by Natasha Brown reviewed
Skewering journalistic pretension to authority is the main business of a novel that contrives to be both viciously accurate and weirdly off the mark
A satire on the modern art market: The Violet Hour, by James Cahill, reviewed
A world-renowned painter becomes the ghost of his former self, betraying his instincts to embrace sterile abstraction – and even outsourcing his work to ‘a fabricator in Zurich’
The White Lotus is off to a shaky start
The White Lotus, now back for a third series, could perhaps be best described as Death in Paradise for posh…
‘Was I cast because you couldn’t get anyone else?’ Cate Blanchett discusses Rumours
At last, a film about the G7. There have been more movies than you can shake a stick at set…
Learning difficulties: The University of Bliss, by Julian Stannard, reviewed
The bureaucrats have taken over, treating both academics and students as administrative nuisances in a searing satire on university life
A post-Brexit entertainment: The Proof of My Innocence, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed
A satire on radical economic libertarianism combines with a cosy Cotswold murder mystery in an ingenious series of stories within stories
Nothing was off-limits for ‘the usual gang of idiots’ at Mad
First published in 1952, the satirical magazine helped free the American youth of Vietnam War era of some of the stupidest beliefs they were supposed to hold about their country
Do men and women need different podcasts?
Do men and women need different podcasts? The notion goes against the unisex, every-sex, what-is-sex-anyway culture we have come to…
