Society

It is always a pleasure to watch Paris burning. On the surface a civilised country, but scrape a little deeper and France is revealed as a nation of kind of faux-Arabs (aside from that rapidly growing proportion who are actual Arabs): easily incensed into an incandescent toddler fury at real or imagined iniquities, things not working out quite the way that they had hoped. An inchoate existential rage, hilariously — in this case — exhibited by people wearing those absurd yellow fluorescent jackets. They have latterly realised that their leader, Emmanuel Macron, is a smarmy, loquacious, incompetent idiot with strange sexual tendencies. We knew that all along. We told you

We asked friends of The Spectator which picture they’d choose to own. Here is Mervyn King’s response: In the centre of our drawing-room, I would install the ‘Wilton Diptych’. From the Middle Ages, it shows Richard II being presented to the Virgin and Child. We do not know who painted it, or why, and the mystery is reinforced by Dillian Gordon’s discovery that the orb on the English banner contains a tiny image of a green island set in a silver sea. Shakespeare’s Richard II portrays England as ‘this precious stone set in the silver sea’. Would I own a painting Shakespeare saw?   The medieval ‘Wilton Diptych’ To read what pictures

Rod Liddle is spot on about John le Carré (8 December). I’ve long held the view that life is too short to read or watch another le Carré. Your erstwhile columnist Hugo Rifkind put it brilliantly when he wrote of le Carré in these pages in 2011: ‘Single bars burning on three-bar fires; men who are not quite gentlemen turning a collar up against the cold, as grey rain falls on grey streets, and good people die suddenly and hopelessly for plot reasons you don’t quite understand.’ This letter appears in the Christmas issue of The Spectator

The palaver about who should be the next Poet Laureate has begun. I hate the way that the serious art of poetry is turned into something like a horse race, with odds at William Hill. In 1998 the press began speculating about the next one before Ted Hughes was buried. I still haven’t forgiven them for that. It’s not as if the matter is urgent. If the Prime Minister dies, we need a new one quickly. But the country could struggle on without a Poet Laureate for quite a while. If any journalists are thinking of asking me who I think it should be, don’t waste your time. I won’t

Japan has today said it will join Norway and Iceland and resume commercial whaling, withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission, as whaling supports coastal communities. Many Faroe Islanders make a similar argument, as Heri Joensen explains.  Toftir, Faroe Islands Almost twenty years ago I founded a heavy metal band called Týr. Our songs, with titles such as ‘Blood of Heroes’ and ‘Lady of the Slain’, might not appeal to all Spectator readers — but we’ve released seven albums and toured several times across Europe and America. Our album covers depict bloodstained swords and skulls; nobody finds them too upsetting. But when I posted a picture of myself cutting up a

We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 7: Jean Quatremer on the president of the European Commission: The atmosphere in Brussels has become, of late, reminiscent of the late Brezhnev era. We have a political system run by a bureaucratic apparatus which — just like the former USSR — serves to conceal important evidence. Especially when it comes to the health of its supreme leader, Jean-Claude Juncker. At the Nato summit gala dinner last week, videos emerged showing Juncker unable to climb the few steps leading to the podium. He hesitates at the bottom before being grabbed by the very sturdy Ukrainian Petro Poroshenko.

For our Christmas appeal, The Spectator is asking its readers not for money, but something more valuable: internship places for teenagers on the books of the Social Mobility Foundation. We made this appeal last year and the response was incredible. Places were offered in law firms, chemical plants and even the royal household. A few readers wrote in, too, to say how much they welcomed the chance not just to do something about Britain’s notorious social mobility problem but to find bright, young teenagers with no connections. The type of young people companies are looking for but are, by definition, hard to find. I would say that money can’t buy

Each Christmas, The Spectator invites a well-known Westminster personality to contribute a special recipe. This year, we are delighted to offer a delicious recipe from Veronica Crook, otherwise known as the Rees-Mogg family nanny. Enjoy! Every parent (and nanny) knows that Christmas day is both the most exciting day of the year for little ones, but also one of the most boring. Having leapt out of bed long before a winter dawn, children are waning by lunch, dropping by the time of the Queen’s Speech and fractious long before bed time. Not only do fairy cakes distract them but provide a little burst of energy to keep everyone happy. In