Miscellaneous

Comp. 3428 was inspired by Rose Ruane’s Larkin/Shelley mash-up (many thanks to Bill Greenwell for flagging this up): They Oz you up, your Mandyias. They may not mean to, but they do. They give you vast and trunkless legs A sunken shattered visage too. But they were Ozzed up in their turn By Mandyias upon the sand Who half the time had wrinkled lips  And half in sneering cold command. Oz hands on Mandyias to man. Like mighty works atop a shelf  Look on them early as you can Ye mighty and despair yourself.    You were invited to create a fusion of two poems of your choosing. Some came

In this week’s Spectator Schools supplement, Ysenda Maxtone Graham interviews Sir Nicholas Coleridge as he completes his first year as Provost of Eton. He speaks to her about the changing face of the school, Labour’s ‘pernicious’ tax on learning and the possibility of admitting girls (‘Never say never’).  In The Spectator’s Oxbridge files, we reveal a league table showing how well state schools – grammars, sixth-form colleges and others – compete with independent schools when it comes to Oxford and Cambridge offers.  Elsewhere in the supplement, Lara Prendergast turns her eyes to the heavens at Marlborough’s observatory, Lara Brown investigates how boarding schools are dealing with the smartphone menace and Harry

What is Donald Trump up to now? From trade wars and stock market yo-yos to shouting matches in the White House, it can be hard to keep track. The US president’s first 100 days have been predictably riotous. To make sense of it all, The Spectator‘s deputy editor Freddy Gray and Spectator columnist and bestselling author Lionel Shriver hosted a special edition of Americano Live this week in front of hundreds of Spectator readers and subscribers at Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre. What is Donald Trump up to now? From trade wars and stock market yo-yos to shouting matches in the White House, it can be hard to keep track What was the most

Five hundred Spectator readers packed out Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre this week for Coffee House Shots Live: A Look To The Year Ahead. The event on Wednesday night, hosted by Spectator political editor Katy Balls, featured a panel made up of special guests the Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick MP and Labour Together’s Jonathan Ashworth. The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove and economics editor Kate Andrews also offered their insight on the year ahead in politics. Jonathan Ashworth, who spent 14 years in opposition, had plenty of advice for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch. “When you’re in opposition, all you have is the power of your words and the extent to which you can use your word, your speeches, and your

For nearly a decade, the Chinese Communist party has censored Winnie the Pooh, owing to internet memes comparing the slightly rotund President Xi Jinping to the cheerful yellow bear. So, what happens if you ask China’s new budget AI chatbot, DeepSeek, about him? Computer says no. But how rigorous were DeepSeek’s creators?  When we asked our first question, DeepSeek began to answer – only for its censorship to activate, overwriting the reply with an anodyne attempt to change the subject. Early adopters, however, had discovered a loophole: by replacing certain letters with numbers (e.g., A with 4, E with 3), users could bypass some of the restrictions. Here’s what happened

Here’s your chance to have your illustrations featured in The Spectator.  We’re looking for fresh, funny, and original work. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, this is your opportunity to submit your work, as we invite new cartoonists to join our ranks. Picture the cover of The Spectator. What would you put on it? Picture an article you have read recently in the magazine. How would you illustrate it?  If you are a terrific caricaturist, fantastic storyteller and wit who doesn’t take anything too seriously, please throw your hat in the ring. Submit your best cartoons and join the legendary illustrators who have graced the pages of

Allan Scott, who died in mid-May, was one of the country’s pre-eminent crossword compilers and will be remembered by some of our Spectator solvers as Ascot. Allan was born in Southport in Lancashire in 1946. He married his first wife, Hilda, in 1967 and they had two children, David and Carol. He worked in insurance in London until his retirement in 2000. Soon afterwards he moved from Essex to Llandudno with his partner, Christina, whom he married earlier this year. His first crossword had been published in the Listener back in 1977 and in the mid-1980s, while working in Manchester, he had collaborated with Harold Massingham (Mass in The Spectator) on four collections of cryptic

Christopher Brougham has been a Spectator crossword setter for well over 25 years and his puzzle in this week’s issue is his final regular compilation for our series. After a serious illness, he has retired from the Bar as a KC and feels it is time to take things more easily. Chris began solving crosswords in the Evening Standard, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph as a teenager. While studying law at Oxford in the 1960s, he mastered the Times crossword and later participated in the first Times crossword championships. In 1980 he discovered the Azed clue-writing competition in the Observer and has competed in these monthly challenges ever since. In

On Monday evening at 6pm, the Princess of Wales announced her cancer diagnosis in a video message to the nation. Describing the news as a ‘shock’, there are reports that the family is optimistic about her prognosis. Watch the full clip here:

From its inception, The Spectator website has helped to facilitate conversation with – and between – our readers. Not all of them, of course: fewer than 1 per cent of subscribers currently leave comments, although 20 per cent read them. This is why it is a shame that, when we launched our new app, we were not able to import this important feature. Readers love our new app, but they miss the comments. So, we have created a new comments system that you can use on both our website and app – and there’s one big change you need to know about. Comments will now automatically be left under the

Professor Karol Sikora was supposed to be a guest on a Spectator panel last year when one sponsor said they would pull their funding unless he was dropped. Instead the sponsor was dropped, Sikora stayed and today he was back again, opening The Spectator’s Health Summit with our editor Fraser Nelson.  Does it matter if the UK has world-beating cancer treatment if the structure to implement it isn’t there? Or if the UK is the sixth highest funded country in the OECD if it’s one of the worst countries for patient outcomes? The organisational problems in our health service, Professor Sikora says, are worsening its performance. The senior oncologist began

To the surprise of some, the Prime Minister used his conference speech in Manchester last year to announce a New Zealand-style lifelong ban on the sale of tobacco products to anyone born after a cut-off date of 31 December 2008. The ban, which has since been announced in the King’s Speech as the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, could apply to all tobacco products: cigars, pipe and heated tobacco included. The Bill also introduces restrictions on the sale of vapes, though not an outright ban. Is the ban necessary, is it practical, and what are the political motivations behind it? This was the subject of a roundtable discussion held at The Spectator’s