The Week

Leading article

Why an EU summit will never solve the Ukraine crisis

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3″ title=”Anne Applebaum, Matthew Parris and John O’Sullivan discuss Ukraine”] Listen [/audioplayer]For the first time in many years, the eyes of the world are on Crimea. As Russian troops violated Ukrainian sovereignty, the question swiftly became, ‘What can we do?’ If the answer is ‘not very much’, then we ought at least to consider

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 6 March 2014

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said Russia was to blame for ‘violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another country’ by invading Ukraine, so ‘we shall have to bring to bear diplomatic, political, economic and other pressures’. Britain, with Russia and the United States, is a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, guaranteeing

Diary

Tim Rice’s diary: From Eternity to here

Last October, in these very pages, I wrote with what is now annoying prescience, ‘Like almost everyone else in the insane world of musical theatre, I don’t know how to create a hit.’ I am now facing up to the grim fact that my latest effort, From Here to Eternity, is folding after a six-month

Ancient and modern

What Socrates and Harriet Harman have in common

Since apologising has recently been all the rage, refusing to apologise, as Harriet Harman has done over the NCCL’s connection with the Paedophile Information Exchange, comes as a very pleasant surprise. Ancient Greeks would have understood exactly what she was doing. Socrates’ Apology (written by Plato) had nothing to do with apologising. Quite the opposite,

Barometer

Where to open your brothel: an international comparison

The best places to open a brothel The Commons all-party group on prostitution has called for a Scandinavian-style law where selling sex would not be illegal but buying it would be. How does the world treat prostitution? — In a survey of 100 countries by the educational charity ProCon, 50 were judged to treat prostitution

Letters