Spain
In search of the platonic gazpacho
We were eating tapas and talking about Spain. Leaving caviar on one side, when jamón ibérico is at its best,…
Low life
Watching the daily running of the bulls through Pamplona’s narrow streets online this week has given me a wistful pang…
Matajudíos
A village has changed its name because it seemed offensive. But I think the villagers were under a misapprehension. The…
Living history
It has been a while since the BBC really pushed the boat out on the epic history documentary front. Perhaps…
Remembering Raymond
Laughter, bird-watching and erudition with Raymond Carr
Mob rules
Would-be leaders of the left are harnessing the mood of angry populism
A toast to Spain
Towards the chimes at midnight, a few of us left a — respectable — establishment near Leicester Square. Eight or…
Twin peaks
Is there a more beautiful aria than ‘O mio babbino caro’ from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi? There are more overwhelming moments…
No brainer
One feels the pang of impending failure whenever the Royal Ballet ventures like a deluded Don Quixote into a periodic…
Demons of deflation
The new fear haunting Europe
The empire on which the sun never set
Geoffrey Parker is a product of Nottingham and Christ’s College Cambridge, and I think was once a pupil of the…
Low life
Another writer I once liked very much is Gerald Brenan. Brenan served with distinction in the first world war and…
Station to station
Atlantico is a vast buffet inside the Lopesan Costa Meloneras Resort Spa and Casino in Gran Canaria. The Lopesan Costa…
Italy takes the stress-test booby prize as the old Spanish fox emerges the winner
Continuing last week’s theme, it was the Italian banks — with nine fails, four still requiring capital injections — that…
Mr al-Baghdadi’s inspirational vision for Europe
There is something attractive about almost the whole of southern Europe being part of an immense and somewhat rigorous caliphate,…
The Spectator’s Notes
David Cameron is surely right to think that Jean-Claude Juncker is not the man to relieve the European Union’s woes,…
King Juan Carlos must save Spain – again
Might there ever be in this century, anywhere in Europe, a case for serious political interference by an hereditary monarch?…
New ways to open a bottle
Chefs have a problem. Think of much of the best food you have ever eaten. Caviar, English native oysters, sashimi,…
Spirits of Bruegel
The ostensible subject matter is misleading, as is any conflation with his lesser relatives’ wassailing peasants and roistering village squares.…
Off the beaten track
This is probably not a book for those whose interest in Spain gravitates towards such contemporary phenomena as the films…
Pull & Bear
‘This’ll make you laugh,’ said my husband, sounding like George V commenting on an Impressionist painting. ‘Someone in the Telegraph…
In Papa’s footsteps
‘In the years since 1961 Hemingway’s reputation as “the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare” shrank to the extent…
Here comes everybody
This is an unusual book: a Spanish historian writes the life of an English historian of Spain. In doing so,…
Bordering on insanity
Gibraltar is just one geographical oddity in a world full of them
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…