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Mary Wakefield rss

Mary Wakefield is deputy editor of The Spectator.

Rough Sleeper In Oxford Street

Cold comfort

2 February 2013

  An emergency shelter funded by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been opened to offer a lifeline to rough sleepers in the capital whenever three consecutive nights of… Read more

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Stop the drugs war

12 January 2013

‘They’re all bad, our politicians, all corrupt,’ said Maria, her cheery face dissolving into distaste. What about the new president, Peña Nieto? I ask. ‘That pretty boy? Ugh!’ It was… Read more

The fire next time: a protest in Sidon, southern Lebanon, following the Beirut bombing

‘Die slowly, Christian dog’

27 October 2012

There is one main road stretching north-south along the Bekaa valley between Lebanon and Syria. It runs in a beeline from the prosperous little city of Zhaleh, on through a… Read more

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Mexico notebook

15 September 2012

Four a.m. Something was triggering the motion-sensor on the outside light. One minute, darkness, the next, a window-full of flailing palm leaves, bright with rain. I blinked for a bit,… Read more

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‘Drone warfare is coming’

4 August 2012

Quite soon, it will be impossible to ignore the fact that a revolution is taking place. You’ll look up one day and the skies will be full of flying robots:… Read more

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Is Dan the man?

7 April 2012

I first heard the name ‘Dan Jarvis’ on a dance floor at a wedding in Bath. ‘Move like Jagger’ was thumping through the speakers, and most people had given up… Read more

Mary Wakefield

18 February 2012

We are not made incrementally aware of things that happen incrementally. Though something may have been changing for a while, the realisation comes all at once in a swoop, usually… Read more

How to fix orphanages

8 October 2011

Kigali, Rwanda Madame B has dressed up for our visit. She’s sitting on a bench with her back to the orphanage wall, talking about just how much she loves each… Read more

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Private passions

24 September 2011

Do you paint yourself? Or…sing in a choir maybe? John Studzinski looks at me anxiously from the other side of a conference table, in a sleek little office belonging to… Read more

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Let’s bring the abortion debate to life

10 September 2011

No one ever really expected Nadine Dorries’s ill-fated abortion bill to succeed — not after the Lib Dems had made a fuss, and the PM had withdrawn his support with… Read more

Girl power

2 September 2011

In single-sex schools girls don’t see themselves through boys’ eyes, says Mary Wakefield I remember quite clearly the moment I first realised how very lucky I was to have been… Read more

When the ships come in

27 August 2011

Ullapool is always lovely, says Mary Wakefield, but one time of year is particularly special … My mother and I walk east down Argyle street, past the low stone houses, the… Read more

‘Anti-semitism is on the rise’

2 July 2011

Exactly halfway through my conversation with the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, I had an attack of conscience, a small one, but there it was. Sacks had explained the thesis of… Read more

Harlem renaissance

23 April 2011

A massive project to change the lives of America’s poorest children It’s raining in Harlem this morning — big fat American rain tipping out of the big gray sky, sluicing… Read more

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The power of words

2 April 2011

Tom Conti tells Mary Wakefield how to get inside a woman’s mind I watched Shirley Valentine again last night. It’s different when you’re older. At 14 it’s impossible to imagine… Read more

Fish fetish

1 April 2011

About a year ago, on a weekend wander through Kensington, I looked idly through a shop window — and then stood stock-still, unable to process what I was seeing. Through… Read more

Egyptian Notebook

1 January 2011

The adventures of a wrecked ship can be pieced together from entries in its log book. The last moments of some doomed flight can be reconstructed by consulting its black… Read more

6 November 2010

Q. An old friend has been complaining to mutual other friends that I have dropped her because I have become ‘so grand’. The truth is that we are members of… Read more

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Director’s cut

16 October 2010

In the spring of 2008 I went on a press trip with the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, to Hadrian’s wall. It was one of a series of… Read more

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Gut reaction

25 September 2010

Hookworms are parasites. But could they also be a revolutionary medical treatment? In a bright modern office in the University of Nottingham’s complex of bright and modern buildings, Dr David… Read more

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