Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl (Hogarth, £16.99), her modern version of The Taming of the Shrew, came as a surprise: the funniest book she has written, much funnier than Shakespeare. Private Eye considers that I should not praise Ferdinand Mount because I was at Eton with him but we never spoke to each other there, so
When we redesigned The Spectator six years ago, we spent months working on the launch issue and there was one name we wanted on the cover more than anyone else’s: AA Gill. These six letters could make you smile all on their own. They were a guarantee of wonderfully entertaining writing, gorgeous, unusual turns of
Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn tried to move the conversation from Labour’s bad polling to human rights, with a speech to mark International Human Rights Day. However, while Corbyn wished to speak about championing women’s rights across the world, Peter Tatchell and anti-war campaigners had other ideas. As the Labour leader spoke at Methodist Central Hall, Tatchell interrupted to accuse
Want proof of how bad things are for Labour? Jeremy Corbyn and his disastrous leadership is not even its biggest problem anymore. I write in The Sun that Labour’s biggest problem, and it is potentially an existential one, is that its reaction to the Brexit vote is threatening to make it a political irrelevance More
When The Spectator was founded 188 years ago, it became part of what would now be described as a populist insurgency. An out-of-touch Westminster elite, we said, was speaking a different language to the rest of London, let alone the rest of the country. Too many ‘of the bons mots vented in the House of
One remark from the Christmas party season knocks insistently around my head. It came from Nigel Farage on a staircase in the Ritz. For those who didn’t enjoy 2016, a year of political revolution, he gleefully promised: ‘2017 will be a hell of a sight worse.’ My, my. What did he mean? Had he taken
The immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s surprise election victory brought a slew of comparisons with 9/11. In New York, my liberal friends waking up on 11/9 said they experienced the same range of emotions. You will have seen the stories of commuters weeping on the subway, colleges offering counselling to students and a general sentiment that
I’ve chosen two very different stories of young American lives. In Another Day in the Death of America (Guardian/Faber, £16.99), the journalist Gary Younge anatomises American society and its squandered potential by means of a simple conceit: he chose a random date in 2013 and investigated the lives of those children and teenagers shot and
The row about Russia’s state-sponsored doping programme will continue for years. The fact is that Russia has a long tradition of Olympic cheating. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when the big issue in Olympic sport was amateurism, the Soviet Union and satellites sent unabashed and obvious full-time professional athletes, while the International Olympic Committee,
In yesterday’s Guardian Giles Fraser dismisses Louise Casey’s report on social division. Its desire to ‘integrate’ communities is serving liberal capitalist ‘hegemony’. And he dismisses Sajid Javid’s call for all Britons to affirm ‘the shared values that make Britain great.’ This, says Fraser, ‘is actually another way of saying that all must be obliged to pay
Time moves on so quickly and now here we are again – it’s the month when many people are focused on their Christmas shopping. So what better time for shoppers to brush up on their rights, be wary of scammers and consider the best credit card deals to make their cash go a little further. Know your
After all the ups and downs, wins and losses, celebrations and commiserations, 2016 is finally in its twilight hours. We’ve sat some of the Spectator’s top staff and contributors down with a glass of mulled wine to steady their nerves as we ask the big questions: What happened in 2016? And what’s coming in 2017?
Buy-to-let purchases have plummeted, according to The Telegraph. In the year that the Government increased stamp duty by 3 per cent for landlords, research by the estate agency Haart shows that the number of properties sold to buy-to-let investors dropped by 63.7 per cent, falling by 8.2 per cent last month alone. In London, the number of such properties
Last night’s Sleaford and North Hykeham by-election played out in a predictable fashion overall. After Stephen Phillips resigned in anguish over ‘irreconcilable policy differences’ regarding the government’s Brexit stance, the Tories comfortably clung onto the seat — with their candidate Caroline Johnson winning over 50 pc of the vote. It was a good result, too,
Boris Johnson was slapped down by Theresa May yesterday for his comments about Saudi Arabia. And the Foreign Secretary earns himself a similar rebuke in the Guardian this morning. The paper describes his remarks as ‘plain speaking without a purpose’ and says that ‘he frequently shoots from the hip or goes off half-cocked’. It warns
Black to play. This position is from Topalov-Nakamura, St Louis 2014. Black seems to be in big trouble, but how did he turn the tables? We regret that because of the Christmas printing schedule, this is not a prize puzzle. Last week’s solution 1 Bxh7+
I have agonised over this Christmas review. I ate the Christmas lunch at Harveys Nichols 5th Floor Restaurant, Knightsbridge, next to a roof garden sponsored by Nutella chocolate spread. (The review of that restaurant is 17 words long: don’t go there, especially if you like Nutella chocolate spread, because it will ruin it for you.)
Here we go again, my 40th Christmas column in a row, and it seems only two weeks ago that I filed the last one. This is a very happy time of year — parties galore, lots of love for our fellow man and happiness all around. Mind you, there is an old calypso that says:
We’re driving east, destination Grasse. Hairpin bends circling oak-clad hills. Autumn gold and scarlet. Exciting cambers. Blinding winter sunshine. The radio tuned to France Musique. A virtuoso Latin jazz trumpet. A bit poncy but it’s better than nothing. We’ve been talking and not talking. Now we’re talking again. She asks me if I like the
‘Right, this is it,’ I said to the builder boyfriend. ‘I am going to knock on the door of next door.’ ‘I don’t know why you are bothering,’ he said. ‘Does it really matter who lives next door? You’re going to be so happy here. This move makes absolute sense for you. Just look around.