‘Sometimes when I’m down here,’ says Harry, ‘I get them to stop the train in the middle of a tunnel. Just for a minute or two, so I can savour the peace.’ Harry Huskisson is press officer for the British Postal Museum and Archive. He’s showing me the ‘Mail Rail’, the GPO’s underground train system,
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_24_April_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”John Rick MacArthur and Freddy Gray discuss Clinton vs Bush” startat=929] Listen [/audioplayer]America is much less threatened by right-wing extremists than by the oligarchic rule of the two major political parties. The mainstream right, however, is wedded to the absurd notion that the Democrats are a party of the ‘left’ that is in
It’s easy to see why until recently Africa has been a hard sell. It is still regarded as a place for charity rather than investment. But that view is out of date: much of the continent is booming now and investors are wising up. The economy of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow by 6
Three years after The Spectator called on the Chancellor to ‘stop treating pensioners like babies’, his Budget this year gave everyone greater choice about how we enjoy our life savings. While more column inches have been expended on the outside chance that some pensioners might blow the lot on a Lamborghini, less has been said
Here is a paradox. Study the photographs of the flats and houses being sold in London’s prime property boom and you see one minimalist interior after another. The huge, empty sweeps of marble and limestone, broken only by a solitary painting, might give you the impression that it is fashionable to declutter your life. One
It seems odd to enter a room dominated by what Aldous Huxley famously called ‘the greatest picture in the world’ to find not another soul there. Looking down from an end wall of the mediaeval civic hall in the quiet little Tuscan town of Borgo San Sepolcro, Piero della Francesca’s ‘Resurrection’ is an image of
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_April_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray and Freddy Gray discuss the return of God” startat=37] Listen [/audioplayer]Like any movement or religion, atheism has ambitions. Over the years it has grown and developed until it has become about far more than just not believing in God: today atheism aspires to a moral system too. It comes with an
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_April_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray and Freddy Gray discuss the return of God” startat=37] Listen [/audioplayer]What was your reaction recently when it emerged that thousands of unborn foetuses had been burnt by NHS trusts? And that some had been put into ‘waste-to-energy’ incinerators and so used to heat hospitals? Revulsion, I would imagine. But why? I
Who is Dmitry Firtash? Can he solve Ukraine’s troubles? And why is he currently under effective house arrest in Vienna, awaiting extradition on corruption charges to the US, with his bail set at a whopping €125 million? None of these questions has a simple answer — and when I fly to Austria to meet him
‘There is now a deadly virus, which anyone can catch from sex with an infected person. If we’re not careful, the people who’ve died so far, will be just the tip of the iceberg… If you ignore Aids, it could be the death of you.’ It has been hailed as one of the most memorable
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_10_April_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson and Angus Robertson debate Scottish independence” startat=32] Listen [/audioplayer]Sometimes it is easy to understand why countries break up. Some founder on the rocks of their internal contradictions. Others are historical conveniences that have simply run their course. Czechoslovakia was an artificial construct, a country with two languages and cultures, which split
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_10_April_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson and Angus Robertson debate the shared values of the English and Scots” startat=32] Listen [/audioplayer]‘What country, friends, is this?’ We’ve been wrestling with Viola’s question almost from the moment she asked it. It was barely a year after Shakespeare had scribbled out those words, in the first Act of Twelfth Night,
‘Surprisingly’, writes Geoffrey Lean (Daily Telegraph, 4 April), ‘two thirds of the country support onshore wind turbines’. It should not surprise him: those would be the two thirds who live in towns and cities, the people whose distinctive, familiar skylines are on the whole safe. When proposed city structures reach the height of St Paul’s
Kiev Ihor Miroshnychenko, a parliamentarian from Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party, is an ‘emotional’ man. That is the word that he and his colleagues use to describe his raiding the headquarters of the country’s state television broadcaster last month. Accompanied by five other Svoboda bully boys, Miroshnyschenko berated and beat the station director before forcing
As Michael Bloomberg approached the end of his time as Mayor of New York, Americans expected him to run for the White House. He had the money, the profile and the ego to be President. But the problem, as it turned out, was his ambition — he had too much of it to settle for the
Last time I was allowed to write a story for The Spectator, I managed to get away with a frankly smutty and boastful piece about sex. Well, it’s been a while, so… I do hope nobody minds if I do that again. If I’m honest, when young, one of the reasons I decided to mortgage
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_3_April_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Matt Ridley and Fraser Nelson discuss the IPCC’s latest report” startat=67] Listen [/audioplayer]Advocates against global warming often frame the issue in terms of helping the poor. ‘You’re right, people dying thanks to climate change is some way off…’ ran one fairly typical advert recently, ‘about 5,000 miles, give or take.’ Indeed, the United
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_3_April_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Matt Ridley and Fraser Nelson discuss the IPCC’s latest report” startat=67] Listen [/audioplayer]Nigel Lawson was right after all. Ever since the Centre for Policy Studies lecture in 2006 that launched the former chancellor on his late career as a critic of global warming policy, Lord Lawson has been stressing the need to adapt
‘The US stock market is rigged.’ That’s the j’accuse headline that screams out from Flash Boys, the new book by Michael Lewis. It’s a very big claim, made by America’s foremost financial writer. It’s also a claim that, after years of accumulating evidence, warrants extremely close and sustained official scrutiny. Lewis produced Liar’s Poker, his first
Clarissa Tan, who wrote articles and TV reviews for The Spectator, has died of cancer aged 42. She came to London from Singapore after winning this magazine’s Shiva Naipaul prize for travel writing and over the next seven years wrote about a great many things: Asia, race and the East; also smartphones, Sienna and socks.
