Featured articles

Features

A reply to Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips is nothing if not prolific and fast. Even before Spectator readers could access my reply to her earlier criticism of me, she had written and posted her own reply, “He Still Doesn’t Get It.” In it, she selectively quotes from my article.  The quotes do not do justice to the thrust of my

Top 50 Political Scandals: Part One

There is one word that frightens politicians more than any other: scandal. They know that scandal can bring about personal ruin, cut short a promising career and even bring down a government. The power of scandal is that it imprints itself on the public mind. Some are about sex, others about money, drugs or espionage.

This political swine flu is about more than receipts

On 6 December 1648, Captain Thomas Pride, an officer in Cromwell’s army, stood at the door of the House of Commons chamber. He and his colleagues on that day prevented 140 MPs from taking their seats and arrested over 40 of them. The door was then locked, and the key — together with the Mace

Yum, yum: love the mousse. But is it art?

Joanna Pitman talks to Ferran Adrià, widely hailed as the world’s greatest chef and named as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet. He doesn’t think he is Picasso Can I interest you in some almond ice cream served on a swirl of garlic oil and balsamic vinegar? Are you game for

Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick

James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book Imagine how wonderful the world would be if man-made global warming were just a