Society

Monday

Alexander Larman

Is it possible to learn anything new about the royal family?

Another week, another round of royal revelations. Following swiftly on from the publication of Andrew Lownie’s bestselling denigration of the Duke and Duchess of York – Entitled, there is now another tell-all account of the royal family: Valentine Low’s Power and the Palace. It has recently been serialised in the Times (appropriately enough, given that Low is that newspaper’s royal correspondent) and purports to offer a well-sourced and factually accurate account of the relationship between politics and the royal family over the past few years.  We can expect a steady stream of such volumes for some time to come Low is a serious writer, whose excellent 2022 book Courtiers was a particular standout in an often tawdry

Lucy Dunn

Can Starmer’s No.10 reset save him?

Parliament’s summer recess has just ended and, on his first day back, Sir Keir Starmer has already announced a reset of his Downing Street team. A number of people have moved out – most notably James Lyons, the Prime Minister’s director of communications, who was appointed to the role just last year. It’s only Starmer’s first day back, but it’s certainly not a slow start A selection of new faces will now head to No. 10. The most significant move is Darren Jones, the former chief secretary to the Treasury, whom the PM has poached from Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Jones will oversee Starmer’s day-to-day work, with the new title of

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas will struggle to recover from the elimination of Abu Ubaida

Despite its extraordinary discipline and repeated battlefield successes over the past two years, Israel has been judged in many quarters to have failed in one vital domain: the war of information. While Israel has neutralised enemy commanders, destroyed arsenals, and advanced through hostile territory, it has consistently been outflanked in the propaganda theatre, leading armchair generals to declare that no amount of military action can kill “an idea”. The elimination of Abu Ubaida shows that Israel constantly adapts Hamas and its allies have skilfully harnessed imagery, narrative, and the symbols of victimhood to mobilise global opinion, especially in the West. Yet in recent weeks, there has been a discernible shift.

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why shouldn’t adults play with toys like Lego?

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” That perennial funeral favourite, 1 Corinthians 13, has a lot to answer for. Generations of so-called grown-ups have, whether through the fear of God or the fear of embarrassment, done all they can to distance themselves from anything that they fear the neighbours or the man upstairs will think is childish. If you don’t like painting Warhammer figurines or building Lego or collecting Funko models, nobody’s making you Now, only two thousand years later, the tide seems to be turning.

Robert Taylor

Why September 1 is the worst day of the year

How are you feeling about the first day of Autumn? If, like me, you get a distant sense of foreboding, then you might suffer from seasonal affected disorder, aptly acronymed SAD, caused by the body’s inability to produce enough serotonin. Surveys suggest up to five million of us, in Britain, are afflicted to some degree – from people whose mood dips a bit, to those who, as the nights draw in, experience anything from anxiety, lethargy and sleeplessness to a general feeling of hopelessness. Sad indeed. If I have a really good Autumn day it’s despite the darkness, not because of it The awful thing is that SAD can kick in

Sunday

Mary Dejevsky

Who will save Britain from the blight of e-scooters?

A few days ago a pedicab (or rickshaw), decked out in luminous pink, collided with a red London bus in the early hours of the morning. Three people were hurt, two seriously. I won’t delve into the rights and wrongs of what happened; you can see a partial video on social media and there are reports the pedicab was stolen. This is not about one particular accident but about the perils on the streets of London and other cities, occasioned by wildly incompatible vehicles competing for space, by ever more reckless riders and drivers, but above all by the disgraceful and potentially lethal lack of interest shown by the authorities

Matthew Wilcox

Life isn’t good for everyone in the Cotswolds

On paper, Charlbury is everything the Cotswolds is supposed to be. Stone cottages the colour of anaemic butter. Sash windows in a riot of Farrow & Ball sage. A train station that survived the Beeching cuts and gets you to London in an hour. ‘People talk about the Chipping Norton set, but that disguises how rough parts of Chipping Norton and Witney can be.’ It looks like the kind of place where nothing ever happens. And in many ways, it has worked hard to stay that way. While the setting – close to where US vice president JD Vance recently rented a manor house – may look like postcard England,

Saturday

Druin Burch

Why the English fly their flag

For a Brit in America, flag-flying feels so overdone, almost cultish. Why do Americans fly their flag on houses, lawns, even on their lapels? An American friend once gave me a running vest – the garment that over there they call a wifebeater – emblazoned with ‘US Army’. A British veteran I ran with raised an eyebrow. ‘Only Americans,’ he said, ‘need clothes to remind them which army they’re in.’ The recent sudden spread of English flags has caused alarm. They are ‘symbols of prejudice, not pride,’ says the Guardian, and good news for ‘the hard right’. The BBC suggested to Andy Burnham that flying the English flag was ‘contentious’. ‘You

Alexander Larman

Is Taylor Swift’s love life too good to be true?

After years of dating effete Englishmen, Taylor Swift has finally found her man. The singer is engaged to Travis Kelce, that rugged all-American specimen of manliness. Their announcement has united the United States in joy: even her former nemesis Donald Trump rather surprisingly described the forthcoming union as taking place between ‘a great guy [and] a terrific person.’ But call me cynical: Swift’s dating history has not just enriched her personal life – it has undoubtedly also helped advance her career. Her engagement is no exception. Swift’s love life has helped her gain plenty of attention Back in 2008, when Swift was beginning her determined assault on the charts –

Friday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Tom Slater, Justin Marozzi, Iben Thranholm, Angus Colwell & Philip Womack

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Tom Slater says that Britain is having its own gilet jaunes moment; Justin Marozzi reads his historian’s notebook; Iben Thranholm explains how Denmark’s ‘spiritual rearmament’ is a lesson for the West; Angus Colwell praises BBC Alba; and, Philip Womack provides his notes on flatmates. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Andrew Tettenborn

The Epping hotel ruling is a victory – and a defeat – for Labour

It wasn’t surprising that the Home Office chose to back an urgent appeal in the Epping hotel case. Not only were its asylum arrangements in tatters as a result of Mr Justice Eyre’s decision last week: more important, the deadline of 12 September set by the court to stop the use of the Bell Hotel in Essex as a migrant centre on planning grounds faced it with a potential logistical nightmare. If more authorities followed the Epping line, things could have got exponentially worse. Legally, the Home Office has won; politically, its victory could be remarkably Pyrrhic The Court of Appeal’s discharge of the interim injunction this afternoon gives the

Stephen Pollard

Only a fool won’t welcome the NHS chickenpox vaccine rollout

It’s rare that any government – not least Keir Starmer’s – does something to which there can be no even vaguely arguable objection. Today’s announcement that the NHS will begin vaccinating all babies against chickenpox next year is a rare exception. The vaccine rollout should be welcomed by everyone. The only serious question that should be asked is why it has taken so long for us to seek to wipe out chickenpox The only serious question that should be asked is why it has taken so long for us to seek to wipe out chickenpox. The vaccine is 98 per cent effective and, if taken up sufficiently, chickenpox will simply

Thursday

William Moore William Moore

The coming crash, a failing foster system & ‘DeathTok’

45 min listen

First: an economic reckoning is looming ‘Britain’s numbers… don’t add up’, says economics editor Michael Simmons. We are ‘an ageing population with too few taxpayers’. ‘If the picture looks bad now,’ he warns, ‘the next few years will be disastrous.’ Governments have consistently spent more than they raised; Britain’s debt costs ‘are the worst in the developed world’, with markets fearful about Rachel Reeves’s Budget plans. A market meltdown, a delayed crash, or prolonged stagnation looms. The third scenario, he warns, would be the bleakest, keeping politicians from confronting Britain’s spendthrift state. We need ‘austerity shock therapy’ – but voters don’t want it. To discuss further, we include an excerpt

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Man Utd vs Grimsby is what football should be about

Poor old Ruben Amorim. The sight of the hapless Manchester United manager cowering in the Blundell Park dugout seemingly praying that his billion-pound team could somehow scrape through on penalties against fourth-tier Grimsby in the Carabao Cup last night is now indelible. Perhaps only the tear drenched face of Rachel Reeves cowering in her own dugout in the House of Commons will compete this year for visual power. As you are probably aware, Amorim’s invocations were to no avail: after a marathon penalty shoot-out United lost. Though it wasn’t just Grimsby but football as a whole that was the winner. Last night’s game was a glorious evocation of all that

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Rylan is a sign the immigration debate is shifting

I’ve always been quite fond of Rylan Clark. No, that isn’t quite true – when his terrifyingly toothsome grin appeared for the very first time on TV, as a contestant on The X Factor back in 2012, I did grimace at this apparently air-headed Katie Price-meets-General-Zod wannabe. As often happens with reality TV, despite what its critics say, prolonged time spent in his screen company revealed a quite different person. As he says in his own bio on X, ‘Started as a joke. Still laughing.’ This incident looks trivial. But I think it may be one of the most significant shifts in the Overton window on the illegal immigration issue

Chas Newkey-Burden

London needs more – not fewer – ‘headphone dodgers’

When you’re travelling abroad, a good way of getting the measure of any city is the culture of its public transport. I visited Australia several times as a child and I was surprised by how chatty strangers were on trains and buses. People sat down and struck up a conversation with whoever was sitting next to them. I’ve noticed that natural connection between passengers in many other countries. It’s different in London, where passengers generally sit in tense silence, avoiding any interaction with each other and not even acknowledging that anyone had the temerity to travel at the same time as them. If something extreme happens like a truly epic

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Which are the ‘Twelve Churches’ that made Christianity?

40 min listen

What links the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and St Peter’s in Rome with the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and Canaanland in Ota, Nigeria? These are just some of the churches that Anglican priest and writer the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie highlights in his new book Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings that made Christianity. The Anglican priest and writer joins Damian Thompson on Holy Smoke to explain how each Church not only tells a story but also raises a surprising dilemma for modern believers. Fergus aims to tell the history of the Churches ‘warts and all’ and argues that, from Turkey to Britain, today’s Christians

Justin Marozzi

The human stories of slavery

With a new history of slavery and the slave trade in the Islamic world just published, I am under strict instructions not to make any fatwa-related jokes. The Holy Trinity, if I can mix my faith metaphors for a moment, of publisher, agent and wife have advised me strongly against it. ‘No jokes about fatwas, please,’ were my wife’s exact words ahead of an appearance at Chalke History Festival. ‘No one finds them funny.’ I disagree. They can be extremely funny. But on balance it may be wisest to err on the side of caution. After three weeks in the curiously bland Nigerian capital of Abuja, much of it holed

Theodore Dalrymple

There’s nothing ironic about civilisation

A recent photograph on a BBC website startled me. It was of hundreds of books thrown out of a former library in Croydon on to the ground.  It startled me because I had taken an almost identical photograph 34 years before – in Liberia. The books in the University of Liberia had been pulled from their shelves and scattered in similar fashion to those in Croydon. Of course, the books in Liberia were at a higher intellectual level. The capital city of Monrovia was in those days cut off from the rest of the country by the forces of Charles Taylor, and the only way to arrive was by the

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The painful truth about foster care

The foster care system in this country is collapsing. There are roughly 80,000 children who’ve been removed from violent or neglectful parents and need homes, but there’s a catastrophic lack of people prepared to care for them – a shortfall of around 6,500 foster carers. The rate of decline is terrifying. Every year the small pool of available foster households shrinks and those who do apply to be carers are increasingly elderly. Perhaps you assumed that a generation with ‘Be kind’ tattooed on their wrists would leap to look after the worst off? Not a chance. ‘Be kind’ is an instruction to others, not a memo to self. Neither my