There’s nothing like a financial crisis to bring out the worst in people. Witness the shocking rise of Golden Dawn, a bunch of Nazi thugs masquerading as a nationalist party, currently rampaging through the streets of Athens. Ironically, another unfortunate side effect of Greece’s colossal debt mountain has been a drop in the number of
For most Romans, there were no such things as ‘summer holidays’. Holidays were for the rich, who went to their Cape Cod equivalent: the bay of Naples, leaving the stench, filth and disease of malarial Rome for the tideless, sheltered bay (‘bay’ derives from the local resort Baiae), cool sea breezes, healthy spas and agreeable
What do New Year resolutions mean? Nothing, I have discovered, unless you resolve your old year’s first. In September I was diagnosed with colon cancer and since then, I’ve had time to think about time. It seems as though my past years have collapsed, one after another, one into the other, until I can see
Arriving at Marseilles’s Gare St Charles in the early hours of a balmy October night, the first marvel of the city that is pointed out to me — both proudly and affectionately — is a large, well-fed rat that pours itself into a nook in the stone wall of the station. ‘Welcome to Marseilles,’ says
It’s 5 a.m., a splashy grey dawn, and we’re out of here on easyJet. Palermo is another world of heat and brightness but we’re not stopping; at the port we board a catamaran which churns its way towards the Aeolian islands, the volcanic archipelago off the north-east corner of Sicily. The islands are named after
A hundred years ago, travel writers commented, there was something peculiarly depressing about Menton — or Mentone as the British would say, recalling the days when the town situated on the Mediterranean border between France and Italy was an independent Italian-leaning state. It was depressing because wherever you looked there were people tottering palely along
This is not an article about hedonism. Oh, no. The Amalfi coast may be the favoured historical playground of the bad and the beautiful — from Tiberius to Sophia Loren and Gwyneth Paltrow — but my theme is one of culture. What is it about this rocky stretch of southwest Italy that has drawn such
During a frantic online rummage for last-minute Christmas presents (I am too old to risk actually purchasing anything on the internet this close to the 25th, but I thought I might find some inspiration for presents I could then go out and buy in the shops and drag home in a bag on a stinking
It is strange now to recall the jubilation with which the ‘Arab Spring’ was welcomed. Amid all the excitement of dictators toppling, many people here in the West, as well as some over there on the ground, forgot that the test of a revolution is not the overthrow of a tyrant, but what comes next.
Let’s get this straight. I’m a feminist. That’s the way I was brought up. My mum was a passionate women’s libber and I always agreed with my mum — even when she was wrong — but she was right on that one. The struggle to free one sex has liberated both. The human species is now
Behind Michael Gove’s desk stands an imposing McCarthy-era poster which says: ‘Sure I want to fight Communism — but how?’ In their less charitable moments, Tories may argue that his Department of Education is as good a place as any to start. The strength of its grip over state schools has long been the subject
Look down the list of the masters, wardens and principals of Oxford colleges and you’ll soon see that The Spectator’s contributing editor Peter Oborne was on to something with his theory of the inexorable rise of the media and political classes. At high tables across the university, former journalists, broadcasting executives and quangocrats are increasingly
More than half a decade has passed since the recession that triggered the financial panic and the Great Recession, but the condition of the world continues to be summed up by what I’ve called ‘turboparalysis’ — a prolonged condition of furious motion without movement in any particular direction, a situation in which the engine roars
My belief in God is not philosophical. It is not rooted in metaphysics or reason. It springs from the heart and the senses. It is practical. Every Sunday I attend the 11 o’clock Mass at the Jesuit church in Farm Street, Mayfair. I have been doing this, intermittently, for decades. For me, Farm Street is
Just before stepping down as Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Robert Runcie told me — in a sotto voce conversation during the General Synod — that charismatic evangelical parishes such as Holy Trinity Brompton (‘HTB’) in South Kensington, with their American-style worship, near-fundamentalist teaching and smart social connections, posed more of a threat to the
Christmas isn’t about giving. Or receiving. It’s about washing up. And for some of us that’s its greatest joy. You think men hide from housework? Not when it comes to the soapy science, we don’t. Virtually all my male friends share a love of the bubbles. For us, ‘festive season’ equals ‘even more plates and
Craig Brown Which classic work do you think this comes from? ‘Her teeth were white in her brown face and her skin and her eyes were the same golden tawny brown. She had high cheek-bones, merry eyes and a straight mouth with full lips. Her hair was the golden brown of a grain field that
Joanna Lumley and Sister Elizabeth Obbard are seated at the front of the church. Lumley is perched elegantly on the edge of her chair; Sister Elizabeth settles deep into hers, submerged under folds of habit. They are talking in front of an audience at the Carmelite church in Kensington, west London, about life as a
In mid-November an Indian chauffeur taking me to Broadcasting House made a detour to show me the Christmas lights in Regent Street. He wished to share the pleasure that they gave him and it was with glee that of the shops he used the terms ‘top class’ and ‘posh’, when to me the street seems
The electricity will be on in one hour, says my landlady. She tells me that it is dark out all over town (ignoring the glittering chrome bridge over the Mtkvari River, ignoring the casino that casts neon shadows on the banks at night). She calls me ‘daughter’ and evades specifics. Won’t I come upstairs for
