Piers Paul Read 
Satan is back
It used to be said by Catholic priests back in the 1950s that the Devil was delighted when human beings decided that he did not exist. In those days it… Read more
Benedict XVI in perspective
In March 2005, when it became clear that Pope John Paul II would soon die, Boris Johnson asked me to write a piece for The Spectator predicting who would be… Read more
Piers Paul Read
In a recent exchange of emails, my Member of Parliament, Mr Andy Slaughter, told me he intended to vote in favour of same-sex marriage. No doubt by now he has… Read more
Horrors too close to home
Reading this new edition of W.G. Sebald’s discursive meditation upon the blanket bombing of German civilians during the second world war took me back to Berlin in the early 1960s… Read more
In a Greene shade
One of the unanticipated benefits of British rule in India is the body of distinguished writing in the English language coming from the Indian diaspora — Naipaul, Seth, Rushdie, Mistry,… Read more
A bitter legacy
André and Simone Weil are hardly household names in Britain today, but in the world of mathematics the former is acknowledged as a genius for his work on number theory;… Read more
Misogyny is not just for men
‘Was it Vauvenargues or Chamfort,’ asks Pierre Costals in Henri de Montherlant’s novel Pity for Women, ‘who said that one must choose between loving women and understanding them?’ Most men… Read more
Between cross and crescent
By the time the First Crusade was launched by Pope Urban II in 1095, Christendom had been at war with Islam for almost 400 years. In the view of Al-… Read more
The Muslims’ letter to the Pope is not all it seems
The Muslims’ letter to the Pope is not all it seems At first sight the letter from 138 prominent Muslim scholars and imams to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian… Read more
What’s become of Baring?
Maurice Baring is one of those writers of whom it is periodically said that he is unjustly forgotten and ripe for reappraisal. In his own lifetime, he was a prolific… Read more
The Pope was not attacking Islam
Piers Paul Read says that the controversial nature of the Pope’s address has been missed in the furore over Muslim sensitivities: he was daring to equate Europe and Christendom When… Read more
Post-war feuds and dilemmas
Albert Camus was an exceptional man who lived in interest- ing times. His parents were pieds-noirs — French settlers in Algeria. His father died at the battle of the Marne… Read more
The man who should be Pope
Pope John Paul II’s recovery from his tracheotomy in the Gemelli Hospital in Rome will have delighted his well-wishers, but it may have come as a disappointment to the Pope… Read more
Decline and ascent
As a rule I decline to review books by old friends: it puts either one’s integrity or the friendship at risk. I make an exception of Father Joe because I… Read more
The Catholic Cheshire Cat
Yvonne Cloetta, the French wife of a Swiss businessman, was Graham Greene’s mistress for the last 30 or so years of his life. Her husband spent most of the year… Read more
From negative to positive
The late J. G. Farrell, author of Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur, used to say that he never read novels by contemporaries: the bad ones bored him while the… Read more
A very errant knight
Nicholas Shakespeare is one of the few contemporary British novelists who successfully integrate the political with the personal in the lives of his characters. Like Graham Greene, he has an… Read more
Latest blogs
- 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
- The Tory grassroots were feeling neglected long before ‘swivel-eyed loons’ claims Isabel Hardman
- Swivel-eyed loons are a feature of British democracy Rod Liddle
