The Week

Leading article

Thank heavens for Justin Welby!

For decades, interventions of the Archbishop of Canterbury in national debate were like a sporadic bombardment of small pebbles against the door of Downing Street. Justin Welby has changed all that. This week, payday loan companies are facing reform (or in some cases oblivion) as new caps on interest payments come into effect. That the

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 13 November 2014

Home The government, expecting a backbench rebellion over the European Arrest Warrant, did not present it for a separate vote in the Commons, which enraged backbenchers all the more. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, tabled a procedural motion, forcing David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to hurry from the Lord Mayor’s banquet in white tie

Diary

Ancient and modern

Barometer

From the archives

From the archives | 13 November 2014

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 14 November 1914: We must make no attempt to conceal the terrible character of our losses. It is true that the German losses have been probably twice, or possibly even three times, as heavy, but that does not make our own losses the less awful. That we shall

Letters

Spectator letters: Richard Ingrams defends Joan Littlewood, and the truth about Napoleon’s poisonous wallpaper

The state of Italy… Sir: Ambassador Terracciano’s letter (Letters, 1 November) about Nicholas Farrell’s article (‘The dying man of Europe’, 25 October) seems to me to be ill-researched and not thought through. Nicholas Farrell is spot on. The Ambassador is not. In another forum the Ambassador, on being asked what Italian nationals contribute to Britain, claimed