iapps
Malthus’s children
Two hundred years ago, the creepy Revd Thomas Malthus would take to his pulpit to rail against the copulating lower orders. Author of An Essay on the Principle of Population… Read more
Dictating terms
When the International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up ten years ago, it was meant to make the world a safer place. The Court and the various UN war crimes… Read more
War on games
On a visit to my old school not long ago, I found myself confronted by my former PE teacher, now the deputy head. She fixed me with an icy glare.… Read more
Edinburgh notebook
One of the rites of passage for a comedian is walking through the rain at the Edinburgh Fringe, looking down and seeing one of your own flyers being trampled underfoot.… Read more
A fan’s notes
When was the last time a piece of technology made you happy? Truly happy, so satisfied with the experience that you immediately wanted to repeat it? For me it was… Read more
The new country garden
Like Nostradamus, the vision is flickering but I believe I have glimpsed the future — at least, the future look of garden and landscape design. I wonder whether, in these… Read more
Driving to Shangri La
I’d go to Canada if I wanted to ski, or fish, or see the Northern Lights, but in the end it was only to launch my (Canadian) boyfriend D.W.’s book… Read more
2077: Below par
Each of seventeen clues comprises a definition part and a hidden consecutive jumble of the answer including one extra letter. The extras spell the first four words of a saying… Read more
25 August 2012
With the exception of the French Academy immortals Michel Déon and Jean d’Ormesson, two wonderful writers and both the epitome of charm and graciousness, the French can be a pretty… Read more
Sickly sweet
In Competition No. 2760 you were invited to submit an example of the kind of treacly inspirational poetry that adorns the office walls of a life coach and might be… Read more
25 August 2012
Then she rented us a luxury apartment at Penzance in Cornwall for a week. Sightseeing was not high on our agenda. Bring cable ties, she’d said. I’ve been a naughty… Read more
Oh for the Prince Maurice
Around the middle of last year, I was approached by the writer Tim Lott to see if I’d like to be a judge in the annual literary competition he organises.… Read more
25 August 2012
Q. My wife is known to run a very well-organised house. As a consequence, weekend guests often arrive without the right kit, assuming they can go and raid our boot… Read more
25 August 2012
Being the girlfriend of the world’s most devastatingly handsome gay celebrity nutritionist has its disadvantages. I know, how could that statement possibly be true? What could be more divine for… Read more
Cooking witches
The Witchery is almost a themed restaurant; it is a weeping medieval tenement, just below Edinburgh Castle, which looks like a blackened tooth. Inside, it has wood panelling, wall paintings,… Read more
25 August 2012
What has happened to Italy, a country that not even Mussolini could discipline? It used to be cheerfully anarchic and self-indulgent: cars parked haphazardly all over pavements, long lunches and… Read more
2074: capital punishment
Six unclued lights are names for HELL (12), which is ‘A CITY MUCH LIKE LONDON’ (38 43) according to a quotation by SHELLEY. First prize J.H. Peevers, Didmarton, Glos Runners-up… Read more
25 August 2012
Kigali Eighteen years after Rwanda’s bloodbath I disembarked from my flight and was surprised to see that mortar craters no longer pitted the airport tarmac. At a city café where… Read more
Latest blogs
- Rupert Murdoch: Cameron’s in trouble – I read it in The Spectator. Fraser Nelson
- Lamont: QE is blowing another bubble. It will soon meet a pin. Norman Lamont
- Can any government really expect to carry out ambitious reform? Isabel Hardman
- Spectator Play: what’s worth watching, listening to or going to this weekend Camilla Swift
- Drummer Lee Rigby Douglas Murray
- Eight Golden Rules for Tragedy Tweeting Freddy Gray
- Government behaving badly over ‘quietly aborted’ lobbying reform Iain Anderson
