Scotland
The still point
Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song is the best-remembered title of a short career. Born in 1901, he was dead by…
Hanging offence
Modern Scottish Men, a new exhibition celebrating the achievements of male artists in the 20th century, opens next month in…
Joubert’s the man to sort out Syria
Not since Walter Palmer, a cudddly Minnesota dentist, put down his drill and vanished off the face of the earth…
Can the Great British public be made to care passionately about the EU referendum?
It’s early days, I know, but the Outers have convinced me. Britain will not collapse into chaos and penury if…
Centralising, illiberal, catastrophic: the SNP’s one-party state
Nicola Sturgeon’s government is an illiberal, centralising disaster. Time for a revolution
What Scottish professors have to fear from Nicola Sturgeon’s power grab
What Scotland’s professors have to fear from the SNP’s latest bright idea
Speech impediment
Who goes to big-screen Shakespeare? Not theatre-goers much, and with reason. Apart from the odd corker by Kurosawa, arguably Olivier…
Will Spain learn?
One of the unforeseen consequences of the reunification of Europe after the Cold War has been a resurgence of independence…
Wild life
Laikipia A lion has just mauled and partially eaten a warrior who tried to throw a spear in my…
Following the fickle fish
Fish stories come in two varieties: the micro-version of a hundred riverside bars, blokeish boastings of rod-and-line tussles with individual…
Diary
During our annual odyssey around the Scottish Highlands, I read Tears of the Rajas, Ferdinand Mount’s eloquent indictment of imperial…
Diary
‘Devon, Devon, Devon/ Where it rains six days out of seven.’ Nothing beats a British seaside holiday. And north Devon…
Comic relief
Mum’s, or to use its full title, Mum’s Great Comfort Food, is a restaurant in Edinburgh designed to soothe itinerant…
Glasgow
A wet walk in a Glaswegian graveyard might not be your idea of fun, but then you might not have…
The Spectator’s Notes
Amnesty International and others have placed a large newspaper advertisement telling Michael Gove ‘Don’t Scrap Our Human Rights’. The ad…
The SNP land grab
Are estate owners to be nationalised?
Barometer
Plagued by stigma The World Health Organisation told doctors to stop naming diseases after people, places and animals so as…
Diary
I am writing a play about Dr Johnson and his Dictionary. It will be performed in Scotland later this year.…
The moment of Ruth
Scotland’s top Tory is a moderniser’s dream
Scotland’s nasty party
If the SNP isn't about Scottish purity and hating the English, why do so many of its supporters behave as if it is?
Full of sound and fury
John Knox, Cranmer complained, was ‘one of those unquiet spirits, which can like nothing but that is after their own…
State of play
How has political theatre fared during the coalition? Not very well, writes Lloyd Evans
Barometer
Any answers? Nigel Farage accused the audience in the BBC opposition leaders’ debate of being left-wing. Need insulting an audience…
Letters
Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…
Diary
Andrew Marr 22 August 2015 9:00 am
This is the Corbyn summer. From the perspective of a short holiday, my overwhelming feeling is one of despair at…