Matthew Parris
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
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
How a nice little rabbit can win the political rat race
‘Nice people, with nice habits/ they keep rabbits/ but got no money at all,’ sang the popular duo Flanagan and Allen in my father’s day. I can still remember Dad… Read more
Latest blogs
- Andrew Feldman denies calling Tory activists ‘swivel-eyed loons’ Fraser Nelson
- The swivel-eyed loons in the Conservative party are revolting. And they are right to revolt. Alex Massie
- Top Tory calls party activists ‘mad swivel-eyed loons’ James Forsyth
- Spectator Play: what’s worth watching, listening to or going to this weekend Camilla Swift
- Hammond on manoeuvres? The other Tory MPs who fancy a crack at the leadership Isabel Hardman
- Some anti-fascists are very fascistic Douglas Murray
- What Gove should know about Singapore schools Clarissa Tan
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