Matthew Parris 
Beyond the Malachite Hills, by Jonathan Lawley; Last Man In, by John Hare - review
In post when the curtain came down on Britain’s African empire, there survives today a generation of colonial officers whose numbers are dwindling fast. Many were fired by an idealism… Read more
Who’s afraid of a snooper’s charter? Ask Google
Forgive me, but let’s go straight in. Readers of a sensitive disposition look away, but there’s a serious reason for the exercise I suggest that those with access to Google… Read more
Why I won’t be selling my gold or silver
It must be a couple of years since, spooked by the banking crisis and walking past the Savoy hotel on the Strand, I remembered a clever but impetuous Polish friend’s… Read more
Frontline Tories to Cameron: ‘We don’t want to look nasty and we don’t want to look mad.'
Just before Easter, writing for the Times, I talked to 30 of the 40 Conservative MPs with the most marginal constituencies. My aim was to get a sense of how… Read more
Why do amateur performers still flourish?
Chesterfield is a medium-sized town just off the M1, near what were once the coalfields of north-eastern Derbyshire. Not without history (and a lovely old market square) and not without… Read more
Gay sympathy for Cardinal Keith O’Brien
Were you to try to identify the sort of journalist least likely to feel sympathy for Keith O’Brien, I suppose you’d place near the top of your list a columnist… Read more
What’s in a brand name? From Beechams to Brasso
Showering the other day, I noticed a visitor had left his shampoo behind. Going through the familiar ablutions I stared glassily, half-focused on the immediate foreground, in the way you… Read more
A snapshot moment in Old Havana
The Parque Mátires ’71 is pleasant, nothing special, hardly distinguishable from dozens of other little parks in Old Havana. Fairly safe, reasonably clean, shabby, some tatty greenery and a few… Read more
How Graham Greene spoilt my tropical rapture
On the patio of my hotel in Havana… No, begin again. It isn’t really a hotel, it’s a Casa Particular — someone’s home. Delia’s home: a modest ground-floor apartment in an… Read more
The ineffable sadness of Franco’s ruins
The end of an old year cast me into a portentous frame of mind as I descended a couple of thousand feet down an ancient path through forest, brush and… Read more
Gay marriage the easy way
‘The next time we want to import a horse to Russia,’ wrote Laura Brady, Second Secretary in our Moscow embassy, ‘it will be a doddle.’ I quote her story in… Read more
A Christmas Carol for the Chancellor
‘“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits, without their visits you cannot hope to shun the path I tread…”’ ‘“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past,” said… Read more
Can anyone defeat the town-hall zombies?
Others have already swelled a chorus of rage against Rotherham -council for removing three foster children from the couple caring for them, on the grounds that the couple were members… Read more
Listening out for the silent minorities
A day or so after writing a column, when the horse has certainly bolted, you read it in print. Now you are hit by l’esprit d’escalier. Ideas you left out… Read more
Why a visit to a school persuaded me that young people aged 16 to 18 should have the vote
Let me guess most readers’ reaction to news that Alex Salmond has arm-twisted Westminster into allowing 16- to 18-year-olds in Scotland to vote in the 2014 Scottish referendum on independence.… Read more
Which way is right: the centre holds
Few put a political argument better than Tim Montgomerie, the editor of ConservativeHome, and his latest column in the Times is no exception. Policies portrayed as priorities of the Tory… Read more
A pity that’s afraid to speak its name
On the Sunday just passed I sat alongside Polly Toynbee in Manchester as one of Andrew Marr’s two newspaper reviewers on his morning programme on BBC television. Arriving at dawn,… Read more
A lost illusion at the Last Night of the Proms
It was the last night of the Proms and the first I’ve ever attended. I’ve watched it on TV, of course, and even been to a Last Night of the… Read more
Meditation on a Spanish church clock
The despoilation of the Mediterranean coast from Barcelona to the French border in north-eastern Spain is well known. To meet the demand for package holiday resorts in the late 1960s… Read more
Latest blogs
- Same Sex Marriage Bill: how MPs voted The Spectator
- Gay marriage easily passes third reading vote in the Commons James Forsyth
- Labour claims credit for gay marriage bill Isabel Hardman
- David Cameron has caused a crisis in conservatism Miles Windsor
- Cameron has reached the tipping point Martin Bright
- Sir David Nicholson to go: but will it change the culture at the top of the NHS? Isabel Hardman
- Scottish independence: it’s still (almost) all about oil. Alex Massie
Why is there such guff in the online comments below my articles?
What’s to be done about the online comments sections in daily newspapers? These (for those estimable Spectator readers who have yet to succumb to tablets, iPhones and computer screens) are… Read more