Columnists

Columns

Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 17 January 2009

The gay lobby should rejoice at the Pope’s argument that God makes us the way we are I have been puzzling during the winter holidays over Pope Benedict XVI’s Christmas message. You may remember that it was interpreted as an attack on homosexuality, provoking the usual outrage. Most people, it seems, saw the response. Few

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 17 January 2009

Charles Moore’s reflections on the week Watching the BBC’s excellent dramatisation of Anne Frank’s diary last week, I was struck by the family relationships depicted. They reminded me strongly of another family. Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was the dominant and admired figure in the household. He ran a small business supplying pectin for jam-making, but

Any other business

Can hedge funds live to fight another day?

Hedge Fund Land seems to be in disarray. Investment losses keep mounting up. It would not come as a surprise to hear that fully 70 per cent of these often complex and sophisticated offshore investment vehicles have percentage losses running into double figures over the last year, with a large number down by over 25

And Another Thing | 17 January 2009

A Pantocrat who should be on everyone’s curriculum The decision by the authorities to drop Coleridge from the syllabus of state schools is intended as another nail in the coffin of English literature. He is to be replaced by a person unknown to me but apparently popular on TV quiz shows. No reason is provided

Global Warning | 17 January 2009

My wife tells me, and so it must be right, that now that we are retired we must beware of the involution of our habits and interests. It is all too easy for old people to live the petty round, in which a visit to the grocer seems an expedition of some magnitude, and not