Home > The Magazine > Features

Friday 21 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Features

A very English coup — and the end of our national church

On the eve of the General Synod and the Lambeth Conference, Theo Hobson says that the sleeping giant of evangelical and orthodox Anglicanism has been awoken by liberal agitation and Rowan Williams’s failed leadership. The church is damaged beyond repair

Thank goodness we can have a run on the pound when we need one

Martin Vander Weyer looks ahead to next week’s Pre-Budget Report and reflects on George Osborne’s contentious remarks about the devaluation of sterling. It looks like Gordon Brown is getting away with his borrowing binge — leaving the Tories isolated

I loved Oliver Stone’s Bush film — and I know why the critics hated it

The movie W. did not provide the crude anti-Bush agitprop that the reviewers craved, says Rod Liddle. This was precisely its strength: we need to get inside the minds even of those we most deplore

The great Tory tax and spend battle: seconds out...

In the wake of Cameron’s decision to drop his pledge to match Labour spending, Fraser Nelson and Daniel Fin kelstein of the Times trade rhetorical blows over the issue that is gripping and troubling the Conservative party as it adjusts to the transformed economic context

Where is our inspiration when we most need it?

Bryan Forbes remembers listening to Churchill as a 14-year-old evacuee and now looks with envy at Obama’s capacity to galvanise hope. Where are his UK counterparts?

Arts

Glorious gadgets

Is Christmas creeping up on you, unawares? Again? Have you found yourself, even at this late hour, facing a nil-all draw as far as presents bought, and presents asked for, is concerned? Never mind.

Winning formulas

Andy Hamilton was an exceedingly welcome panellist in the days when I did The News Quiz, so I’m biased.

Books

Not always a saint

Sybil Thorndike: A Star of Life, by Jonathan Croall

New light on a dark age

Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom, by Tom Holland

Style & Travel

Spain’s secret kingdoms

Few tourists see the buildings, birds and flowers of Leon and Burgos, says Simon Courtauld

Climb every mountain

Jeremy Clarke tries the high life at the Carlton hotel, St Moritz

Thank goodness we can have a run on the pound when we need one

Martin Vander Weyer

I loved Oliver Stone’s Bush film — and I know why the critics hated it

The movie W. did not provide the crude anti-Bush agitprop that the reviewers craved, says Rod Liddle. This was precisely its strength: we need to get inside the minds even of those we most deplore

Rod Liddle

Click here for full contents