Terrorism
There are many scenes in this overlong play that consist, literally, of drivel: John reviewed
The NT’s new production, John, is by a youngish American playwright, Annie Baker. We Brits tend to assume that ‘john’…
Returning jihadis must be brought to justice
At first sight, the evidence presented in David Anderson’s report into the four terror attacks committed between March and June…
Security overkill is terror’s real triumph
The moment the news broke on Halloween that an Uzbek in a rental truck had just killed eight people on…
Calling Paddock a ‘lone wolf’ isn’t racist
It’s been nearly two weeks since Stephen Paddock committed mass murder in Las Vegas and the FBI is still casting…
Navigating a new world
In the 1890s, when British-owned ships carried 70 per cent of all seaborne trade, legislators worried about the proportion of…
Verbal diarrhoea
In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus…
Ratings war
Planning for the ‘war of the future’ is something generals and politicians have been doing for the past 150 years.…
Accept this as the new normal? Never
Not long after the Parsons Green Tube bombing, another of those viral, defiant-in-the-face-of-terror cartoons started doing the rounds. It was…
A clash of loyalties
If someone was to lob the name Antigone about, many of us would smile and nod while trying to remember…
Straight to hell
No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…
We’re losing the cat-and-mouse terror game
I wonder how Mohammad Khan is getting on in his legal action against Virgin Atlantic. Mo — a Muslim, the…
A clash of creeds
This is a very modern novel. Terrorist atrocity sits side by side with the familiar and the mundane. Where better…
When novels kill
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
Moderate Muslims are not particularly moderate
‘What’s in the news this week?’ I asked my wife as she browsed the first newspaper we had seen for…
An inconvenient truth
‘Our findings will shock many people,’ promised Trevor Phillips at the beginning of What British Muslims Really Think (Channel 4,…
Letting terror win
Publicity and panic make us all accessories to jihadi murders
The prying game
One of the marks of a good Home Secretary is a healthy wariness of those in authority who come begging…
‘Excess is obnoxious’
Justin Marozzi on the bitter irony of Aleppo’s ancient motto
Hollande’s own emergency
His response to the Paris terror attacks has left the French president increasingly isolated and unpopular
The Spectator’s Notes
Many have rightly attacked the police for their handling of the demented accusations against Field Marshal Lord Bramall, now at…
Chance encounters
Some might say that Jeremy Corbyn is cloth-eared, tone-deaf, socially inept but on Monday morning, as the death of the…
Barometer
In with the new How the new year is being celebrated around the world. From 1 January… BRITAIN: Annual Investment…
It is political correctness, not maniacal bigots, that will end civilisation
What does one do, attend or refuse a party after a tragic event such as the recent Paris outrage? My…
‘They pull a gun, you pull a hashtag’ – the ridiculous debate over what to call Isil
We should worry less about what to call Isis, and more about how to fight them
Corbyn’s defence
The Labour leader’s line on Syria is more principled and more forward-looking than the Prime Minister’s
