Diary
Susan Hill
I bet you remember your first fountain pen. Mine was a Conway Stewart with marbled barrel, I had it for starting Big School and I used to polish it. That… Read more
Harry Mount
At evensong in Trinity College, Cambridge last Sunday, Ann Widdecombe was preaching. The pews were packed, with many in the congregation bagging seats half an hour before the service began.… Read more
Anthony Horowitz
It was a perfect spring day in Hiroshima last week. I was there for my 25th wedding anniversary, which may sound odd, but my wife and I both work on… Read more
Peter Oborne
One of the first world statesmen to send a message of sympathy to Boston after last week’s outrage was Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein. ‘Just watching news of the… Read more
Petronella Wyatt
One of Lady Thatcher’s least publicised qualities, which raised her above any other politician I have known, was the complete absence of schadenfreude or triumphalism. In 1992, I was fortunate… Read more
Matt Ridley
We’ve discovered that we own an island. But dreams of independence and tax-havenry evaporate when we try to picnic there on Easter Sunday: we watch it submerge slowly beneath the… Read more
Sarah Vine
After £4 million of taxpayer’s money and eight months of celebrity hand-wringing (bar a few notable and worthy exceptions), democracy has finally triumphed: Leveson has got the press where many… Read more
Trevor Kavanagh
I learned on Wednesday that a row is exploding over freedom of the press … in Australia. Surely some mistake. Australia is refreshingly open and its newspapers are free to… Read more
Quentin Letts
The week starts with a bang — literally — when my 1986 Land-Rover explodes, mid-gear change: CLANK and the exhaust pipe burps blue smoke. The old girl rolls to a… Read more
A.C. Grayling
My friend and colleague Roy Brown has just sent me the draft of a statement he will submit to the UN Human Rights Council this spring, on behalf of the… Read more
Griff Rhys Jones
I have spent a week with old, old men, interviewing veterans who served with the West African regiments in Burma in the 1940s. It’s for a television programme about my… Read more
Justin Webb
Waiting for a match to begin at the gloriously situated Recreation Ground — home of Bath Rugby — I take a moment from shouting ‘Come on you Bath’ at the… Read more
William Dalrymple
The Jaipur Literature Festival, which I help to direct, has in just six years grown like some monster from an Indian epic. Each year it doubles in size and we… 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
Simon Barnes
It’s a rum go, working in sport professionally. Your business is everybody else’s fun; their frivolity is your seriousness. Still, at least I was able to watch the Australian Open… Read more
William Shawcross
Kofi Annan has just been in town for an evening organised by The Spectator. The 800 seats at the Cadogan Hall could have been sold twice over; the former UN… 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
Bruce Anderson
There is a lesson to be learned from the Francis Report into the NHS in Mid-Staffordshire, and from the police force’s current travails. Nigel Lawson once said that the NHS… Read more
Joanna Kavenna
I am re-reading D.H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia. The opening line runs: ‘Comes over one an absolute necessity to move…’ He expands on the dilemma (I paraphrase): you are afflicted… Read more
Latest blogs
- MPs defeat ‘wrecking amendment’ as Cameron tries to patch things up with grassroots Isabel Hardman
- David Cameron should be out there making the case for gay marriage James Forsyth
- A point of order, Your Royal Highness Steerpike
- William Hague: Case for changing arms embargo on Syria ‘compelling’ Isabel Hardman
- UKIP, Pierre Poujade and a political class that’s seen to be “out-of-touch”. Alex Massie
- Labour tries to defuse civil partnerships row – by backing government amendment Isabel Hardman
- Will civil partnerships kill the gay marriage bill? Isabel Hardman
