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The strange, beautiful Christmas I spent alone
My parents gave up on Christmas altogether once I left home for university. They had never been people for celebrations…
Real life
‘What a worry the Ulez must be for you both,’ said a friend with a nod to the pick-up truck…
High life
Athens With energy bordering on the demonic, I strut around an ancient stadium trying to make up for…
Out of nowhere
Will Hungary’s surprise opposition leader out-Orbán Orbán?
Fresh hell
Prepare for the ‘metaverse’
Stupid fuels
Net zero is a disastrous solution to a nonexistent problem
Diary
COP26 is not your typical power summit, because world leaders, NGOs and hacks are all in the same scrum. Outside…
A man in a hurry
After a wretched childhood, H.G. Wells was ruthless in making up for lost time, says Frances Wilson
To Di for
Jasper Rees talks to the Chilean director Pablo Larrain about his new film, Spencer, which makes The Crown look like royalist propaganda
Fight club
When book groups turn nasty
Forging a new life
At Intelligent Life, the Economistmagazine where I worked for some years, it was easy to feel intellectually challenged. Even the…
Diary
Rishi Sunak had a pre-game Twix and a Sprite to prepare for this week’s impressive Budget. I used to have…
Nuclear option
It’s time we conquered our fears over the safest power of all
The Spectator’s Notes
When I went to Poland not long before Covid, I found a country more bitterly divided by a culture war…
If it ain’t broke
At one point in an early Simpsons, Homer comes across an old issue of TV Guide, and finds the listing…
Radical error
Britain’s fatal unwillingness to confront Islamic extremism
‘A change of mind and heart’
Michael Nazir-Ali on his decision to join the Catholic church
Diary
The wonderful thing about woke narratives is that you only have to wait a while until they collapse. The core…
Wuhan clan
The price I paid for my lab leak exposé
A passionate patriot
Americans regard George III as a power-crazed petty tyrant – but he was the very opposite, says Kate Maltby
O what a lovely Waugh!
Sumptuous, glorious, luminous, lavish: Granada’s 40-year-old adaptation of Brideshead Revisited remains the sine qua non of mini-series, says Mark McGinness
Pass judgment
Italy’s anti-Green Pass movement has a new figurehead
The pandemic has made cynics of us all
A report by MPs into the spread of the coronavirus has concluded that the government’s approach constituted one of this…
Right turn
Boris is returning conservatism to its roots
Let there be life
Philip Hensher finds this year’s Booker shortlist more concerned with serious world issues than vivid characterisation
