The great thing about the World Cup is you don’t even have to watch it to enjoy it
Even though I don’t watch much football I love the World Cup because it’s my passport to total freedom. I…
My encounter with the self-righteous cry-bullies of Cambridge
There’s a Tracey Ullman comedy sketch about the extreme and ugly form of political correctness afflicting the youth. It’s set…
More gripping than any scripted thriller: November 13 – Attack on Paris reviewed
There were 1,500 punters in the audience when Eagles of Death Metal played their fatal gig at the Bataclan theatre…
How to raise and train a teenage daughter
‘Dad, am I driving like a normal driver yet? Are you relaxing like a normal relaxed passenger or are you…
Why is this Israeli drama such a hit with Palestinians? Because it tells the truth
‘The rule in our household is: if a TV series hasn’t got subtitles, it’s not worth watching,’ a friend told…
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s transgender superman
Comics aren’t what they used to be. In 1976 I was 11 — the perfect target audience for probably the…
Magisterial: BBC1’s A Very English Scandal reviewed
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little, so you can imagine how sickened I was by the magisterial…
Turns out life’s not so easy – just look at Ulysses S. Grant
When Winston Churchill was at the nadir of his career, he wrote a biography of his ancestor, the Duke of…
Which now unbearable TV show has been ruined for ever by political correctness?
Twenty years after it first appeared, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is back for a brief, week-long anniversary run…
We don’t deserve capitalism
Next time there’s a terrorist atrocity in Britain, here’s one of the things that will happen in the immediate aftermath:…
What’s the point of Philomena Cunk?
Because I’m a miserable old reactionary determined to see a sinister Guardianista plot in every BBC programme I watch, I…
Why I have succumbed to sourdough mania
This ought to be the perfect time for a rant about how we’ve reached peak sourdough. It’s been all the…
Wild Wild Country makes me want to set up my own cult
I have decided to set up a cult, which you are all welcome to join, especially those of you who…
Why a Big Oil row tells us it’s time to stop fetishising experts
Something extraordinary and largely unreported has just happened in a court in San Francisco. A federal judge has said that…
The genius of This Country
Sometimes — really not often but sometimes — a programme that’s good and honest and true slips under the wire…
I wish I had kept my Brummie accent. I’d be taken more seriously
‘No one wants to send their son to Eton any more,’ I learned from last week’s Spectator Schools supplement. It…
Babylon Berlin is so brilliant I'd advise you not to start watching it
Babylon Berlin (Sky Atlantic), the epic German-made Euro noir detective drama set during Weimar, is so addictively brilliant that I’d…
How did I learn women are superior? From a burst water pipe
‘It’s always me who gets the worst of it,’ said the Fawn, surveying the wreckage caused by the burst water…
I didn’t realise Petra was an ad for Merkel’s immigration policy: Civilisations reviewed
Most of the history I know and remember comes from my inspirational prep school teacher Mr Bradshaw. History was taught…
Even being pro-Trump didn’t lose me as many friends as being pro-Brexit
When I mentioned on social media recently that I’d lost friends because of Brexit, I was quite surprised by the…
David Hare is the kind of second-rate artist who flourished under Stalin
Shortly after my rave review of McMafia eight weeks ago, I got a long message from an old friend chastising…
Extreme pain, of the purest intensity, changes everything
Since my pulmonary embolism a couple of years ago, I have become something of a connoisseur of pain. The agony…
The worst thing about Piers Morgan is that he deserves his success
Perhaps you missed the fuss because there has been so little publicity about it. But last week, at Davos, the…
How the Rat sniffed out £15,000 down the back of my virtual sofa
It must be about 25 years since the Rat first made an appearance in The Spectator. He started out as…
Is Britannia really in the Game of Thrones’ league?
It’s a terrible thing for a TV critic to admit but I just don’t know what to make of Britannia,…
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