War
High life
Two weeks ago in St Moritz I ran into both Nicolas Niarchos and Nikolai von Bismarck, two talented young men…
Letter from Kyiv
I write this from my Kyiv air raid shelter. It has become my second home, an improvised bedroom, study and…
Battle lines
The art of wartime cartoons
The Russian army is running out of momentum
As the Russian invasion enters its fourth week it is clear that its forces are running out of momentum, although…
Low life
‘We’re at war!’ said the taxi man as I installed myself for the long drive to Marseille. I put a…
Britain is finally remembering the forgotten soldiers of empire
Each year, flowers of remembrance are left on the tomb of the unknown soldier in Westminster Abbey. The memorial marks…
Would Japan defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack?
In a parliamentary debate in early June about Covid, Japan’s prime minister Yoshihide Suga said that Australia, New Zealand and…
Homeric levels of misery
The National Theatre has given Sophocles’s Philoctetes a makeover and a new title, Paradise. This must be ironic because the…
Barometer
Rare Lili Other than the new royal baby, is there anyone in the world formally called Lilibet? — There are…
The terrifying development of AI warfare
The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in France contains some of the earliest known Palaeolithic cave paintings, including those of lions, bears, and…
From colander to bed of nails
I first became aware of the work of Marcelle Hanselaar in a mixed exhibition at the Millinery Works in Islington.…
From worst to best
It was something a friend said to me about The Revenant, Leonardo diCaprio’s bloody-minded and brutal Oscar vehicle: ‘The problem…
High life
New York Here we go again, the annual holiest of holies is upon us, although to this oldie last Christmas…
Concrete poetry
Since technology is developing at such light-speed pace, why does it feel so strangely slow? There is a sense that…
If this is a war, let’s fight it like one
Under the cloud of conformity that has settled over the land as a replacement for air pollution, heretics who doubt…
What if a virus were ever used as a WMD?
This article is in The Spectator’s May 2020 US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. Faced with the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump…
The coronavirus is springing the Thucydides trap
The first casualty of informational war is truth. The first American casualty of COVID-19 was the myth that the United…
How to be a man
The river of death has brimmed his banks And England’s far and Honour’s a name But the voice of…
Donald Trump, president of peace
This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. Groupthink is the last thing a country needs when debating…
The dark side of Venus — goddess of war as well as love
Bettany Hughes has spent a decade, she tells us, exploring the origins of the goddess Aphrodite, first for a BBC…
Does Trump have a better idea than endless wars?
This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. ‘WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND…
Sebastiao Salgado – master of monochrome, chronicler of the depths of human barbarity
Occasionally, we encounter an image that seems so ludicrously out of kilter with the modern world that we can only…
An important story but not for the faint-hearted: Deadliest Day podcast reviewed
One of the advantages that podcasts have over the scheduled array of programmes is the space that can be given…
Few soldiers have seen as many terrible sights as Don McCullin
Diane Arbus saw mid-20th century New York as if she was in a waking dream. Or at least that is…
Radio 3 had the most simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact
Amid all the remembrance, Radio 3 came up with a simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact. Threaded…
