Second world war
High life
None of this would have happened had I accepted my neighbour’s invitation to dine with a Swiss billionaire banker, or…
Spare us the preaching
It doesn’t help the cause of The Railway Children Return that the original 1970 Railway Children film is currently on…
High life
New York Prince Pavlos, heir to the Greek throne, turned 55 recently and I threw a small dinner for him.…
Have we got news for you
In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…
The great deceit
Operation Mincemeat is based on the book by Ben Macintyre, which in turn is based on what Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper…
High life
Was it Socrates who said that chaos was the natural state of mankind, and tyranny the usual remedy? Actually it…
Neville’s advocate
Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain
The Guinea Pig club
Lloyd Evans on a musical that tells the story of the pioneering maverick whose methods for treating disfigured second world war airmen revolutionised plastic surgery
Debacle at Dieppe
In my mother’s final days we had a long conversation about the second world war. I asked if she’d ever…
Dutch courage
The Forgotten Battle is a Dutch feature film commemorating the desperate and relatively little-known Allied assault on the Scheldt estuary…
High life
Do any of you remember the time when everything took place on the terraces and in outdoor cafés? Before everyone…
Incredible hulks
Laura Gascoigne on the art of pillboxes
A character assassination too far
Revisionist biographies of Churchill are nothing new but this one lays the hostility and contempt on with a trowel, says Andrew Roberts
High-minded vs heartbreaking
It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…
Apocalypse now
Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death
Low life
Where the 36th (Ulster) Division attacked at 7.30 a.m. on the first morning of the Battle of the Somme in…
Home affront
What we can learn from Britain’s rationing mistakes
Bop till you drop
Stuart Jeffries on the dark history of dance marathons
Inherited trauma
Okinawa is having a moment. Recently a Telegraph travel destination, to many in the west it’s still unfamiliar except as…
Churchill’s enigma
The real riddle is why he cosied up to Stalin
Unlived lives
Francis Spufford was already admired as a non-fiction writer when he published his prize-winning first novel, On Golden Hill, in…
The Spectator’s Notes
Domenica Lawson, daughter of Rosa and Dominic, the former editor of this paper, has Down’s syndrome. She is classified as…
Chance of a lifetime
As I gaze at my four children on Christmas morning, clambering on to the bed with their stockings, I will…
The Venus de Marlene
Tanjil Rashid on the legend of Dietrich
The Midas touch
It’s well known that you should never meet your heroes because they will only disappoint you. Less commonly said, but…
