Society

Tuesday

David Abulafia

Should this Anglo-Saxon drama have a diverse cast?

A new eight-part TV series co-produced by the BBC about England in 1066, entitled King and Conqueror, has diverse actors playing Anglo-Saxons. Elander Moore will reportedly play the real historical role of Morcar, an Earl of Northumbria who fought against Viking and Norman invaders. At first sight there might be plausible precedents for the choice of black actors to play leading parts in this kind of historical drama. But looking more closely you have to wonder whether ‘my truth’ is taking over from ‘the truth’ and generating false views of the past. The show presents an unusual angle on the well-known history of England at that critical moment More than 30

Monday

Debbie Hayton

Will Anneliese Dodds finally see sense on trans rights?

The waiting is over. Anneliese Dodds has been named as minister of state for women and equalities, and will attend cabinet as part of her role. Meanwhile, Bridget Phillipson will be the official minister, tied into her Secretary of State for Education brief. It’s not the courageous change that some were hoping for: Dodds was equalities shadow to Kemi Badenoch in the previous parliament. Dodds needs to wise up to basic truths fast now that she is sitting round the cabinet table But let’s hope now she’s taken up the role that Dodds has worked out what a woman is, and her vision for equalities is – as Badenoch pointed

Alexander Larman

Has America had enough of Prince Harry?

It must be a strange time to be Prince Harry. A year and a half ago, he was the most famous man in the world, thanks to the headline-grabbing publication of his autobiography Spare. Whether you thought it was brave, incisive and fascinating, or overwritten tawdry nonsense, it was hard not to have an opinion on both the book and its subject; Harry’s every movement and utterance was eagerly scrutinised. But an awful lot has happened since, not least the illnesses of his father and sister-in-law. Even his wife’s increasingly desperate-sounding America Riviera Orchard brand has overshadowed his own efforts to put himself in the spotlight. So when he was

Daniel Thorpe

Violence surges against Syrian refugees in Turkey

A wave of violence targeting Syrian refugees is spreading through Turkey, triggered by allegations of the sexual harassment of a child by a Syrian man in the city of Kayseri. The child, also Syrian, was related to him, according to the authorities. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, 3.1 million Syrians have been granted temporary protection in Turkey, according to official figures. But now there are growing public demands for them to return to Syria, fuelled by both the governing and opposition parties in Turkey. As reports of the incident in Kayseri snowballed on social media, mobs combed the streets, attacking and burning houses, businesses, and

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

How Labour’s jail strategy could come unstuck

Let’s talk cobblers. The Prime Minister has responded to the jail space crisis by ennobling the nation’s shoe mender-in-chief James Timpson and making him minister for prisons, probation and parole. This is a bold move but not one without risk. It would only take one high-profile crime committed by a prisoner on early release to plunge the strategy into crisis Timpson has made his fortune out of the ubiquitous key cutting and watch repair outlets that sprout from many big supermarkets. He’s less well known for a passionate interest in penal affairs. He became the first household name retailer to employ carefully screened prison leavers in his shops and they have returned his trust by

Sunday

Jawad Iqbal

Emma Raducanu’s critics need to pipe down

Those taking a pop at tennis star Emma Raducanu for her last-minute decision to withdraw from a mixed-doubles match alongside Andy Murray – effectively ending his Wimbledon career – are out of order. It is not Raducanu’s fault that her pulling out of the match, scheduled for Saturday evening, brings the curtain down on Murray’s illustrious career at Wimbledon. The British tennis star is worried about a potential problem with her wrist (understandable given her injury record since winning the 2021 US Open), and decided to prioritise her upcoming match in the women’s singles. It is unfair of Murray’s mother, Judy, to describe Raducanu’s move as ‘astonishing’ It is perfectly

Sean Thomas

My day in Le Pen land

At first glance, for the visitor driving by, Guingamp in northwest Brittany looks idyllic. It is a typically lovely stone-built French small town, it has a sweet river running through the middle, it has pretty ramparts and a ducal chateau and riverbank gardens, with agreeable new fountains in the centre. It even has a decent-sized supermarket open on Sunday. In Guingamp, on a dead Sunday afternoon, I somehow felt more uneasy than I did in war-torn Ukraine At least it did last Sunday, the first French election day, when I paid a visit. The difference for me is that – unlike most trippers – I didn’t breeze on after a

Mark Nayler

The thrill of the Pamplona bull run

The first time my friend Rob and I experienced Pamplona’s San Fermin festival was in 2017. Held every year from 6-14 July in the northern Spanish city, it’s most famous for its bull runs, or encierros: at 8 a.m., on eight consecutive mornings, the six bulls destined for that evening’s bullfight, as well as six docile oxen to guide them, run for almost a kilometre through Pamplona’s oldest quarters, accompanied by thousands of thrill-seeking human participants known as mozos.  Rob and I have now run with the bulls of Pamplona four times – once that first year, once in 2018 and twice at last year’s festival (it was cancelled in 2020 and

Saturday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Angus Colwell, Matthew Parris, Flora Watkins and Rory Sutherland

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: after President Biden’s debate disaster, Freddy Gray profiles the one woman who could persuade him to step down, his wife Jill (1:05); Angus Colwell reports from Israel, where escalation of war seems a very real possibility (9:02); Matthew Parris attempts to reappraise the past 14 years of Conservative government (14:16); Flora Watkins reveals the reasons why canned gin and tonics are so popular (21:24); and, Rory Sutherland asks who could possibly make a better Bond villain than Elon Musk? (25:00).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

Friday

Debbie Hayton

How Keir Starmer can make it up to Rosie Duffield

Congratulations to Rosie Duffield, who has won re-election for a third time as Labour MP for Canterbury. For many women – and men, indeed – Duffield’s courageous stance on sex and gender has been a beacon of sense, and a reason to vote Labour. She increased her majority from 1,800 to almost 9,000, an astonishing success in a county where she had previously been the sole Labour MP. It started with LGBT+ Labour’s demand for ‘an apology and reparations’ Duffield’s success owes little to Keir Starmer who couldn’t even be bothered to invite her to his election campaign launch just up the road in Gillingham. Perhaps he is still smarting

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Sophie Winkleman Edition

29 min listen

Actress Sophie Winkleman was born in London, educated at Cambridge, and has appeared in television and film roles across both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps best known for her roles as Big Suze in Peep Show and Zoey in Two and a Half Men, she is now patron to several children’s charities.  On the episode, Katy Balls talks to Sophie about how she got into acting, whether she has ever dated a Jez or a Mark, and why she believes in the comfort of strangers. Sophie also talks about her campaign to reduce smart phone use and technology exposure for children, which you can read more about here.  Produced by Patrick

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The reckoning: it’s payback time for voters

39 min listen

This week: the reckoning. Our cover piece brings together the political turmoil facing the West this week: Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, and Joe Biden all face tough tests with their voters. But what’s driving this instability? The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews argues it is less to do with left and right, and more a problem of incumbency, but how did this situation arise? Kate joined the podcast to discuss her argument, alongside former Cambridge Professor, John Keiger, who writes in the magazine about the consequences that France’s election could have on geopolitics (2:32).  Next: what role does faith play in politics? Senior editor at the religious journal First Things Dan Hitchens explores

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Let’s start the new era with a glass of champagne

‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory.’ As the last constituency results trickle in, we’ll all inevitably find ourselves in some combination of those four states. If you’re sad, I hope at least you have good company – and that you’re as well supplied with the great French spirit-lifter as I have been this week, with a busload of Spectator readers on a tour to Reims, Epernay and Aÿ. But I suspect you’ve also consumed more than enough media comment on the spectacle of second-rate politicians slime-wrestling,

The Spectator

Letters: why I’m voting Reform

Back to 1976? Sir: Your leading article perfectly reflects the public’s attitude to the manifestos of the major parties (‘Challenging democracy’, 29 June). No one has a plan that can remotely be seen as likely to work. Each party promises goodies they have no idea how to pay for; the only question is who will bankrupt us first. As ever, it is easy to distribute largesse, but no one has a clue how to remove it. We are heading towards a rerun of 1976 when the Labour government had to go cap in hand to the IMF. Those old enough can remember inflation of 25 per cent and a Bank

Tibor Fischer

The Orban acolyte who became his fiercest critic

All sorts of people are grateful to Peter Magyar for bounding into the arena of Hungarian public life. Journalists, chiefly. Many a grizzled, lugubrious Hungarian hack had tears of gratitude welling as Magyar demolished the tedium and predictability of Hungarian party politics: Viktor Orban trampling a feeble collection of bunglers and chisellers, known as the opposition, again and again. Of course, the foreign correspondents were even more elated. Vilifying Orban? Step this way for your eulogy and hosannas, you smooth-talking cosmopolitan. Magyar is certainly deserving of attention; he’s fought a remarkable one-man blitzkrieg. In February, no one outside the halls of government knew who he was, and if they did,

Peter Jones

Our new MPs should read Cicero

It would make a pleasant change if every elected MP was to make it their ambition to be honestus, Latin for ‘honourable, moral, a person of integrity’. This brought a man high acclaim because by definition he would be useful, i.e. of benefit, to his country. So argued the statesman Cicero in his three-volume On Duties, composed over four frantic weeks in 44 bc, during the civil war and collapse of the Roman Republic after Julius Caesar’s assassination. In the first volume, Cicero identified the roots of moral integrity in man’s natural instincts and powers of reasoning. That turned him into a social being, while reason also instilled in him

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

History will judge Rishi Sunak kindly

Memorably sweeping statements tripping easily from the tongue have a habit of worming their way into assumptions we make and ending up as the judgment of history. The word ‘appeasement’ rather than the decisions Neville Chamberlain actually took have consigned the name of a defensible statesman to something approaching a term of abuse. ‘Milk snatcher’ did Margaret Thatcher immense damage. The ‘winter of discontent’ has become too easy a shorthand for the coinciding of deep-seated problems which Thatcher herself approached with great caution. I believe Sunak did a sterling job getting grown-up government back on its feet after Johnson and Truss ‘Dementia tax’ was an expression critically important in the

Dan Hitchens

Does Keir Starmer’s atheism matter?

Good Friday, 2021, at Jesus House For All Nations church in Brent, north-west London. Face masked, head bowed, hands clasped, Sir Keir Starmer stands alongside Pastor Agu Irukwu. The pastor opens his arms to invoke Almighty God. We hear Starmer in voiceover: ‘From rolling out the vaccine to running the local food bank, Jesus House, like many other churches across the UK, has played a crucial role in meeting the needs of the community.’ A nice video tribute for Easter, this. Good to see churches getting some recognition. A sign, perhaps, of the inclusive national unity a Labour government would foster.  By Easter Monday, Starmer has apologised, deleted the video

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Biden is as big a narcissist as Trump

The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the American people and only cares about himself. Competent pundits don’t waste wordage on such an over-obvious observation. Less obvious, though more so since last week’s dog’s dinner presidential debate – in the aftermath of which dubbing the encounter ‘elder abuse’ went from droll witticism to exhausted cliché in a few hours – is that Joe Biden’s narcissism rivals Trump’s and may even exceed it. The Bidens’ decision to contest this race was arrogant and criminally oblivious to the country’s future Early in his 2020 run, Biden indicated to apparatchiks in

Douglas Murray

The Tories have only themselves to blame

I was amused the other week to read George Osborne’s Diary in this magazine. In it the man now in charge of giving away the British Museum’s collection recalled something John Major said to him in 1997. This was that the Conservative party ‘will never win while we remain in thrall to the hard right of our party’. It is news that the Conservative party ever was. Really this was a warning from Osborne that the centre-left tendencies of the Conservative party must be adhered to. Though it should be noted that there is a flaw at the source: citing John Major on electoral advice is like quoting a bankrupt