Stephen Pettitt celebrates the new wave of masterful British productions Samuel Johnson famously defined opera in his A Dictionary of the English Language as ‘an exotic and irrational entertainment’. It’s possibly the most overquoted quotation concerning the subject, but in 1755, when the dictionary was published, he probably had a point. Opera, which for some
Peter Jones investigates whether the Olympic Games have always been political. The sight of Chinese thugs invading the streets of our capital in the name of the Olympic Holy Flame Protection Unit (OHFPU — most people’s thoughts exactly) should banish once and for all the idea that the Olympic Games are not ‘political’. Since the Olympic Games do
“When Gordon Brown used to hold meetings at the Treasury, coffee would be served with the milk already added. I always thought that summed up his style. Such was his eagerness to get on to business that he had no time for the 20 seconds it would take to pass round the jug and the
The story of Vladimir Putin and Alina Kabayeva, the 24 year old gymnast turned MP, is bizarre. On Thursday, the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent alleged that Putin was to leave his wife, who he has been married to since before Miss Kbayeva was born, to marry the gymnast. On Friday, Putin denied the story, the editor
Gordon Brown claims he is baffled by the suggestion that his decision to double (not abolish) the 10p starting rate of tax hurts anyone. We all have it confused somehow, he says. So this comment on The Times website may be worth repeating: “Mr. Brown. LET ME SPELL IT OUT TO YOU. I do not pay
The tensions between Gordon Brown’s old team and his new recruits is bound to be exacerbated by the revelation in the Telegraph that Stephen Carter is earning £180,000 a year and his secretary as much as £70,000. This means that Carter is paid as much as the PM and his secretary is paid more than
Melanie Phillips makes three allegations about the UK Drug Policy Commission in her 22 May Spectator Blog, “Britain’s Drug Wars”. First is that we are a “bunch of self appointed busybodies of no status or authority whatsoever”. As a charity we may be self-appointed but a quick look at our web-site would have shown that our
BOOKS If you’re looking to keep up-to-speed with all things Web 2.0, then you could do worse than read Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. Like, say, Wikinomics, it’s replete with information about the power of the internet and mass-collaboration. However, it also pays attention to the problems of the new, social dynamics. Perhaps the key text on all
My article last week (‘Mad Men are taking over the world’) led me to be accused of elitism by one of the magazine’s online readers. What riled him was my suggestion that, rather than spending £6 billion on speeding up the Eurostar journey by an hour, it might have been better to spend a few
To celebrate St George’s Day and Shakespeare’s birthday, The Spectator asked some leading public figures for their answers to this vexing question. Here are their sometimes uplifting, sometimes nostalgic replies Joan Collins It’s the politeness that I miss — the civility that was at one time the Englishman’s (and woman’s) global trademark. I took it
Political wisdom coming from Robert Mugabe is hard to swallow. Nonetheless, I think the leathery old butcher might be on to something. ‘Gordon Brown,’ he said last week, ‘is a tiny dot on this world.’ From some people, that might be mere insult. Yet, when foul Bob describes Gordon Brown as a dot on the
On 19 February 2005 The Spectator’s cover bore the arresting headline: ‘Goodbye England’, and the sombre silhouette of a lone huntsman. The issue attracted much attention, capturing, as it did, the sense of something ancestral and precious being needlessly slaughtered, as hunting with hounds finally became a criminal act. This was a feeling that spread
Blairism may have had its day on this side of the Channel, but Bernard-Henri Lévy says that the English Third Way should be a model to his Gallic comrades French Socialists are extraordinary. For the past ten years, they have made ‘Blairism’ their foil, even declaring that it embodies exactly what the Left — and
In Competition No. 2540 you were invited to take a historical event and submit a newspaper leader on it in the style of either the Guardian, the Daily Mail or the Sun. There are some richly comic examples of the art of red-top headline writing in John Perry’s and Neil Roberts’s Hold Ye Front Page,
Roger Scruton hails the glorious achievements of the English composers, and their role in idealising the gentleness of the English arcadia — so loathed by our liberal elite The English have always loved music, joining chamber groups, orchestras, operas and choirs just as soon as they can put two notes together. But it was not
Shakespeare’s birthday celebrations in Stratford-upon-Avon may be a small-town affair, but it is one of the very few non-London dates that involves the diplomatic corps. On Saturday 26 April no fewer than 18 ambassadors will attend the occasion, the world’s nations joining sundry Warwickshire dignitaries, Stratford’s mayoral chain gang, various Shakespearean bodies, the band of
I’m just back from the United States where the local wine is ridiculously expensive, apart from the ridiculously cheap, and you wouldn’t want to drink an awful lot of that, since Diet Coke may be more subtle. I’m just back from the United States where the local wine is ridiculously expensive, apart from the ridiculously
Before the campaign for an English parliament has time to gather critical mass, its goal may already be achieved. The first vote David Cameron’s government holds on health will be a unique constitutional event: all Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs will be banned from the voting lobbies. There is likely to be no fanfare,
Ainadamar Birmingham Symphony Hall Der Rosenkavalier Royal Festival Hall In a series of concerts in Symphony Hall with the perhaps unlikely title Passion from Birmingham, Osvaldo Golijov’s opera Ainadamar was given a semi-staged performance with the cast that made the bestselling DG recording three years ago. It’s repeated at the Barbican. With few genuine expectations
In Bruges 18, Nationwide This film is about two Irish hitmen, Ken and Ray, who are forced to take a sort of minibreak in Bruges (hence the title; hence why this film isn’t, say, In Milton Keynes) on the instruction of their boss, Harry, who wants them to lie low for a while. The film