Diary
A.N. Wilson
Some time in the olden days, an Irishman called St Piran took the trouble to float over the ocean on a millstone and land in Cornwall, with the purpose of… Read more
Miriam Gross
When we switched on the BBC’s 6 o’clock news on 18 February, we had no idea that it was the day of Whitney Houston’s funeral, and even less that the… Read more
Roger Mosey
When I took the job as director of the BBC’s coverage of London 2012, my cousin asked if anything about the job kept me awake at night. The truth is… Read more
Mary Wakefield
We are not made incrementally aware of things that happen incrementally. Though something may have been changing for a while, the realisation comes all at once in a swoop, usually… Read more
David Hare
One of the best things about being a writer is that you get asked to interesting places. I’ve always turned everything down because I believed I should sit at my… Read more
Rachel Johnson
Try as I might, I can’t pretend even to myself that the Cambridge Union debate against Katie Price was anything but a total victory for tits and telly, and an… Read more
Alain de Botton
I have a book out this week and, as always, it’s a torrid time, alternating between delight at good reviews (A.N. Wilson in this magazine) and despair at the massacres… Read more
Conrad Black
It is hard for me to monitor this from my prison cell in Florida as I wait for the spurious and failed prosecution of me to flounder to an end,… Read more
Harry Mount
At last, 18 years after leaving university, the call comes to appear on the University Challenge Christmas Special. A wonderful boost for my intellectual vanity. Not so good for the… Read more
Andrew Marr
This is the time of year when we all need an epiphany or two. Mine came last week driving near Seville, where I’ve been filming. Far away, across the valley,… Read more
Angela Huth
Recently, telling myself I must cure my allergy to the banal language employed by the Church of England these days, I went to a service in a local Norman church.… Read more
Charlie Taylor
Last Easter I left the special school for children with behaviour problems, where I had been head for six years, for a job advising on behaviour at the Department for… Read more
Quentin Letts
Nine years ago we moved to Herefordshire from Gloucestershire, where lovely Jilly Cooper was a neighbour. There is less bedhopping here in the Marches, fewer rakes such as Jilly’s character… Read more
Brendan O'Neill
Athens The manner in which George Papandreou was ousted has shocked Greeks. ‘It’s a foreign invasion, a takeover, only without tanks’, says Calchas, an angry young man whom I find… Read more
Anthony Horowitz
How nice to find myself at the front of The Spectator rather than the back, where I make occasional appearances, albeit under a pseudonym, next to the crossword. I love… Read more
Tom Hollander
Last week I travelled to New York for an audition. And before you ask, I haven’t heard yet. On the flight I sat next to a retired Hollywood producer from… Read more
Philip Delves Broughton
I arrived at the Occupy Wall Street protests on Monday morning, their one month anniversary, at 7 a.m. raring to go. That’s when the subway stations of Lower Manhattan are… Read more
Ozzy Osbourne
I wake up early at my house in Hidden Hills, California, and go downstairs to make myself some toast and a pot of my special atomic coffee (you double brew… Read more
Latest blogs
- Same Sex Marriage Bill: how MPs voted The Spectator
- Gay marriage easily passes third reading vote in the Commons James Forsyth
- Labour claims credit for gay marriage bill Isabel Hardman
- David Cameron has caused a crisis in conservatism Miles Windsor
- Cameron has reached the tipping point Martin Bright
- Sir David Nicholson to go: but will it change the culture at the top of the NHS? Isabel Hardman
- Scottish independence: it’s still (almost) all about oil. Alex Massie
