You know you’re in good hands when the dedication reads: ‘To the writers, drinkers and freethinkers of the Arab and Islamic worlds, long may they live.’ Abu Nuwas was all three, and a complete hoot. Why he is so little known in Britain should be a mystery. But outward-looking as we are as a nation,
This book reminded me of Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland — but where Andersen thinks only Americans have lost their minds, David Andress thinks everyone has. I can’t say I disagree, being a subscriber to the Hourly Outrage, also known as Twitter. Andress refers to Brexit, Donald Trump’s election and Marine Le Pen’s rise in French politics
Cockney feet mark the beat of history, sang Noël Coward, as if he had ever been east of Holborn. Yet the sugary wartime sentiment finds a moving and resonant echo in Melanie McGrath’s new work of social excavation. The past casts an unusually deep shadow over Bow. And, cleverly, she has found a fresh means
In the reign of Constantine, whose conversion to Christianity in AD 310 set the entire Roman world on a course to becoming Christian, a Palestinian scholar named Eusebius pondered the reasons for the triumph of his faith. Naturally, he saw behind it the guiding hand of God; but he did not rest content with that
This is an extract from this week’s Letters pages in The Spectator Sir: One objection to an increase in National Insurance contributions to rescue the NHS is that it would once again exempt from contributing those who most heavily use the NHS — the retired — and heap yet more of the burden on the
If there is a place in Turkey where Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the swaggering six-foot president, looks small it is at the tomb of the nation’s founder. Anitkabir, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s mausoleum, spreads over 185 acres in the heart of the capital Ankara. It is a monument to nationalism, towering modernism and the man who dismantled the
Who is the most powerful person in government at the moment? In normal times, the automatic answer would be the Prime Minister, but things are rather more complicated at the moment. Theresa May’s stock has risen in recent weeks, thanks to her confident handling of the Salisbury attack – and partly because Labour is in
Over the past few weeks, Mr S has detected the faint whiff of May-mania on the horizon. The Prime Minister’s handling of the poisoning of a former Russian double agent on British soil has seen her popularity rise again. What’s more, she learnt a new trick – recently fist-bumping a Salisbury resident. Now she can
Traditionally, the Tory party have always had the support of the countryside. The hunting, shooting and fishing fraternity were solid Conservative stock – and if anyone really drove the final nail into the coffin of Labour rural vote, it was Tony Blair. The early noughties saw numerous marches through central London protesting not just about
The Cambridge Analytica story is full of hot air. Everybody delights in talking about how scary Facebook is, and lots of people believe the Donald Trump and Brexit campaigns somehow hoodwinked whole electorates — because, well, how else could they have won? We hear about creepy and sophisticated-sounding techniques such as ‘micro-targeting’ and ‘psychographics’. But
Remember the Catalonia issue? Up until a couple of days ago, you would have been forgiven for supposing it had all just magically been cleared up. But on Sunday, former pro-independence Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was detained by German police while on his way back from Finland to Belgium, where he has been in voluntary
John Bercow has been keeping a somewhat low profile of late, since bullying allegations were levelled against him. But now the Speaker has chucked himself firmly back into the spotlight with a spot of virtue-signalling in the Commons – by calling Boris Johnson ‘sexist’. Bercow took Boris to task after he referred to the shadow
Since I started writing about issues of sex and gender here a few weeks ago, I have made all sorts of new acquaintances; a lot of people are interested in this topic, it seems. Many of the people I’ve been in touch with are women who worry about the direction of politics, policy and even
Oh dear. It’s no great secret that the Parliamentary Labour Party has struggled to get to grips with Jeremy Corbyn’s response to Russia over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent on British soil. However, up until now they had refrained from criticising him directly in the Chamber. Today John Woodcock decided to go
Theresa May covered a fair bit of ground in her statement to the Commons on last week’s European Council meeting. She talked about how EU leaders were supporting Britain in the stand-off with Russia following the Salisbury attack, on the agreement that leaders reached on the next stage of Brexit negotiations, steel tariffs, and on
It seems like only yesterday Donald Trump was buttering up Vladimir Putin. His congratulations on Putin’s victory and failure to mention the nerve agent attack in Salisbury sent the foreign policy establishment in Washington into high dudgeon. Now the administration has expelled 60 Russian diplomats and shuttered the Russian consulate in Seattle. This is only,
Although Jeremy Corbyn today wrote to the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council to say ‘sorry’ for the ‘pain which has been caused’ by his party’s handling of cases of anti-Semitism, this acknowledgement appears not to extend to all of his supporters. This evening around 500 members of the Jewish community gathered in Parliament
We may be witnessing a #MeToo moment in Labour anti-Semitism. Britain’s Jews, so damn accommodating and willing to extend the benefit of the doubt, have finally snapped and said ‘enough is enough’. At 5.30pm tonight they will gather in Westminster to protest in the most British way imaginable by handing the Labour Party a strongly-worded
Is there really a cross-party consensus on tax rises for the health and social care system? A group of MPs from across Parliament has written to Theresa May calling for a year-long parliamentary commission on funding for all branches of the health system. Meanwhile Jeremy Hunt is calling for a ten-year settlement for the NHS,
No 10 can breathe a sigh of relief this afternoon. Not only has Theresa May’s response to the attempted murder of a former Russian double agent on British soil won her plaudits back home, it has also been met by a rigorous international response. With Germany, France, Ukraine and Canada already expelling envoys, today America