The Spectator
Features
Even if he wins, Obama will be diminished
If a US presidential election has the potential to wear down foreign observers, let alone the American public, imagine what…
Which way is right: Tories should seek truth, not comfort
How can the Conservatives win the next election?
Visiting rites
It’s extraordinary what people now think is appropriate to say in a museum’s comments book
Can you trust a Christian?
Secular prejudice is fine, but religious belief is increasingly suspect
Leaving Lebanon
For 20 years, the benefits of living in Beirut outweighed the dangers. No longer
I am not my cancer
Perhaps being clear-eyed about a life-threatening illness
is the best way to fight it
The Week
Politics of retreat
The closure of Britain’s consulate in Basra marks the end of an inglorious episode in our military history. This ought…
Portrait of the week
Home Theresa May, the Home Secretary, blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States, where he is suspected…
Provoking war
The Pacific countries have tended to look to the USA for protection in territorial disputes and general security, stimulating their…
Columnists
Cameron will announce an EU referendum by Christmas
William Hague is now one of the most pro-European Conservative member of the Cabinet. The man once reviled by the…
The Spectator’s Notes
Probably it will all be all right. Probably the Scots, rightly offered an either/or rather than a third way, will…
Everyone agrees it’s time to get rid of the word ‘insulting’ from the Public Order Act
‘(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he: (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or…
Treating Islam with special reverence is cultural suicide and just plain wrong
My brilliant niece Freya was talking to my brother the other day about the religious education curriculum at her predominately…
Memories of the Black Monday crash and how soon we forgot about it
Twenty-five years ago this week, I became managing director of BZW (predecessor of Barclays Capital) in Hong Kong. The office…
Catholic plates, Sir Stuart’s boob job and tight-lipped Lynton
Many are the mysteries of the Catholic Church. The latest concerns the takings at Westminster Cathedral, which have suddenly soared…
Books
The sage of Aix
Paul Cézanne, though hailed by Pissarro as ‘the genius of the future’, was never recognised as one in his lifetime, says Richard Shone
A life of sad romance
‘What porridge had John Keats?’ Browning offers this as the crass sort of question that stupid people ask. But in…
The growing pains of spirited youth
It is initially unsettling to read a new novel by an acclaimed author that is not really new at all,…
A peacekeeping body at war with itself
It takes less than an hour to fly from Washington DC to New York City. But, if you are a…
Recent crime fiction
Like mists and mellow fruitfulness, Val McDermid novels often arrive in autumn. The Vanishing Point (Little, Brown, £16.99) is a…
One dank October dawn
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Greta Garbo and Cecil Beaton, Mrs Keppel and her daughter, Natalie Barnard and Romaine…
Eager for the fight
Horatio Nelson is England’s most loved military hero. Marlborough is remote from our view, and the aristocratic Wellington was perhaps…
The good …
Edna O’Brien would obviously never write a typical Irish ‘misery memoir’, though she has experienced more misery than is quite…
… the bad, and the ugly
At Oxford in 1960, I had history tutorials from Alan Bennett. Just before he shot to stardom in the revue…
Off the beaten tracks
In 1941 Roy Plomley was 27, and living in Bushey, Herts. After stints as an estate agent, film extra and…
Our most exotic bird
The Black Grouse (Merlin Unwin, £20) is Patrick Lurie’s first book and the first ever on the the subject. Lurie…
Arts
Green fingers
Andrew Lambirth talks to David Nash, sculptor-in-residence at Kew Gardens
Fact and fantasy
Britain’s country houses were constantly in the news a generation ago. In 1974 The Destruction of the Country House, an…
Bizarre visions
If you want to see how myths arise from misunderstandings, the Tower of Babel provides a textbook example. In ancient…
The hate of the new
The title of the new show at the Palazzo Strozzi is a little confusing. Most of the artists in Italy…
A step away from buying toothpaste
Fifty years ago it was not possible to bid at auction via the telephone — that first historic telephone bid…
Westminster playground
Wow. This is a turn-up. Politicians and actors rarely see eye-to-eye. Thesps regard Westminster as sordid, petty, corrupt and corrupting.…
Twin peaks
According to an old ballet commonplace, no one can beat the Russians when it comes to Swan Lake. Biased and…
Dazzling Donizetti
The Met Live in HD series for 2012–13 got off to a brilliant start with a new production of Donizetti’s…
Shrub of life
You know how it is: you wake up in your knock-down corrugated shack, surrounded by chickens and dogs and pigs,…
Falling about and apart
One of the many pleasures of television is that it allows us to forget our manners: we can treat it…
Serious listening
‘Shhhh! Listen!’ Peter White demands of us, his listeners. ‘You’re about to enter into a blind man’s world.’ White, who…
Blurring boundaries
Each of the Buddhist monks’ faces tells a variation on the same story. One simmers with fury, another sags with…
Life
Magnificat
Magnus Carlsen has won the elite tournament split between Sao Paulo, Brazil and Bilbao, Spain ahead of a squad of…
No. 240
White to play. This position is a variation from Vallejo Pons-Aronian, Sao Paulo/Bilbao 2012. White needs an accurate move to…
Matchmaking
In Competition No. 2768 you were invited to supply the profile for an online dating site of a Shakespearean character.…
2085: Buffer zones
The unclued lights, (one of two words), individually or as three pairs, are of a kind. Collins Dictionary confirms the…
2082: 1 to 2082
The unclued lights are the eight principal compilers who have set puzzles for this series from puzzle 1 to 2082…
Dr Alexander’s afterlife
There was quite an important news story buried beneath all the post-match analysis from the party conferences. Apparently there really…
All hail the Heineken Cup
Ah, what joys, the first weekend of the mighty Heineken Cup. How many sporting events are so closely identified with…
Evil empire
Opus has written its name in letters six foot high outside, which is such a screaming act of narcissistic self-doubt,…
Kick-start
The kick-start and the first world war arrived in the same year. Despite talk of a ‘big bazooka’, the former…