The Spectator: 19 January 2013
Just the tickets
Kingsley Amis was never a fan of the Arts Council. Writing in this magazine almost 30 years ago, he described it as a ‘detestable and destructive body’ whose grants and… Read more
19 January 2013
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, brought forward his speech on new relations with the European Union from 22 January when it was realised that it was the 50th anniversary… Read more
Christopher Caldwell
Washington DC: My elegant and sociable mother-in-law received an email this week warning that, should she wander on to her balcony to smoke on Monday, somebody might shoot her. The Secret… Read more
Socrates on career advice
Young girls are constantly being told that they will have failed unless they get a top job as prime minister, CEO of a Footsie company, rocket scientist or cutting-edge TV… Read more
19 January 2013
Aid waste Sir: In Andrew Mitchell’s response to my article ‘The Great Aid Mystery’ (5 January), he asks ‘what about the 11 million children in school who wouldn’t be there’… Read more
Cameron’s European moment has come – a year late
David Cameron should have given his big Europe speech a year ago. Having just threatened to veto a new EU treaty, he had proved that he was prepared to aggressively… Read more
19 January 2013
David Cameron’s long-awaited speech on Europe this week falls 50 years to the day after the death of Hugh Gaitskell. Gaitskell, who died in harness, was the last leader of… Read more
How Moore, Burchill and Featherstone all had a lovely bitch fight
‘Women … are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape — that of a Brazilian transsexual.’ — Suzanne… Read more
Three decades of blood and horror – just the sort of history I like
In the church just a few fields from where I live stands the handsome, painted alabaster tomb to Sir Richard Knightley and his wife Jane. Round the sides of the… Read more
I don’t care whether torture works. It still isn’t worth it
Torture is wrong. You can tell it’s wrong easily, not by the way it makes you feel, or by the extent to which it does or doesn’t conform to ancient… Read more
Hardly a hammer blow if 800 jobs have shifted from Swindon to Solihull
My item last week about brighter prospects for car makers looked forlorn by Friday lunchtime, when news bulletins were leading with a quote from one Tony Murphy of the Unite… Read more
The Pacific President
On Monday, as Barack Obama is sworn in again as President, his allies in the West will ask themselves the same nervous question they posed four years ago: how much… Read more
The mother myth
Here she comes again. Back at the top of the news, draped in the robes of the righteous, embraced by those who sanctify all things traditional: the ‘full-time mother’. As… Read more
Tom Courtenay vs fame
‘You can’t talk about what might have been,’ says Tom Courtenay, reflecting on an acting career that blazed like a meteor the moment he left drama school and is now… Read more
Chávez’s useful idiots
In the ranking of dictators, Hugo Chávez is in the welterweight class. President of Venezuela these past 14 years, he is supposed to be holding a ceremony of inauguration for… Read more
My Venezuelan jail hell
There are two conditions British foreign correspondents must meet before they can consider themselves old hands. The first is having one’s work savaged by John Pilger; the second is spending… Read more
Letter from the Foodbank
It’s our foodbank’s first winter. We started collecting food and giving it to people who haven’t got any in August. Since then we have had to open two more distribution… Read more
Love among the ruins
The phrase that gives this book its title is Graham Greene’s: The nightly routine of sirens, barrage, the probing raider, the unmistakable engine (‘Where are you? Where are you? Where… Read more
Scaling the musical Matterhorn
This book is an account by the music-loving editor of the Guardian of how he set himself the task of learning to play one of the most daunting virtuoso pieces… Read more
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