Lana Lawless, a stocky blonde in her fifties, stepped up to the tee at the 2008 World Long Drive Championship and smashed the ball into a 40 mile per hour headwind. It landed 254 yards away, the length of two-and-a-half football pitches. With that swing, Lawless became women’s world champion. At the turn of the
‘I think he is probably the devil,’ said the work experience boy when I was going to meet Derren Brown, the magician, mindreader, ‘psychological illusionist’, what-have-you. ‘Because he does exactly what I’d do if I was the devil, which is pretend he can’t really do magic and that it’s all just a trick.’ Brown turns
It’s a wise child, they say, that knows its own father. Nowadays, however, wisdom is hardly required; DNA tests can do the job with scientific certainty. For the entire course of human history, men have nursed profound, troubling doubts about the fundamental question of whether or not they were fathers to their own children; women,
The question I’m most often asked is this. How did I end up living and working in south London instead of doing what most reasonably successful movie actors tend to do — sitting around a kidney-shaped swimming pool in Beverly Hills, sipping cocktails and collecting cheques? The question I most often ask myself is a
Ninja Turtles were the first witnesses at last week’s Spectator debate. Ninja Turtles were the first witnesses at last week’s Spectator debate. Proposing the motion ‘Taxpayers’ money should not fund faith schools’, the Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin said that the child of a friend had been denounced as ‘satanic’ at his Christian school for
The Conservatives have proved unafraid of making enemies with their cuts. It’s less clear that they know who their friends are With all the spending review figures published, one question still hangs in the air: whose side is the coalition on? Families with teenagers? No, they’ll be hit by higher university fees. Families where the
America’s politicians are hopeless at understanding other countries – but they’re not alone in that Ever since the United States rose to great power status, it has displayed bouts of appalling ignorance about the politics and cultures of the rest of the world. Pick a region, any region, and one can find quotations and policies
‘Taxpayers’ money should not fund faith schools’ Ninja Turtles were the first witnesses at the Spectator debate. The motion ‘Taxpayers’ Money Should Not Fund Faith Schools’ was proposed by Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin. She evoked the green cartoon reptiles as proof that faith schools are discriminatory and irrational. The child of a friend had
Amsterdam Be careful if you are planning to attack a Jew in Amsterdam. What you see is not always what you get. Throw a rock or spit at some bloke with long curly sidelocks and a yarmulke and before you know it you might end up handcuffed in the back of a police van. What
A trip to the local bodybuilders’ gym under the influence of muscle drugs If you want to get ahead in sports, there’s nothing better than a nice big helping of performance-enhancing drugs. Just ask the guys on the Tour de France. At the end of last month the Spanish cyclist and three-times Tour winner Alberto
So we are to have a new industrial policy, this one courtesy of the coalition government and, more specifically, George Osborne and Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Transport Secretary. Both are economically literate, professing faith in markets as allocators of resources; but they have found the lure of shaping the economy
New Labour Islington is no more – it is now an area for Tory-voting bankers When I grew up in Islington in the 1980s and 90s, there was a reliable election ritual: the bigger the Georgian villa, the more likely the resident barrister was to put up a Labour poster in his sash window. If
When Dr Liam Fox talks about the ‘ghastly’ inheritance he has been bequeathed by New Labour on the defence budget — which is expected to be butchered further in next week’s spending review, he is not giving us the full roll call of shame. Certainly, there were a succession of clueless Labour defence ministers, who
In the spring of 2008 I went on a press trip with the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, to Hadrian’s wall. It was one of a series of jaunts planned by the BM in the run-up to its great Hadrian exhibition, a little Roman holiday. But though the wall was fascinating, I spent
Leisure and pleasure have always been Scylla and Charybdis for politicians. Vacation on a yacht called Monkey Business, borrow a Caribbean pile from a billionaire, spend time with Cliff Richard, and you’re tabloid toast. Not this lot. The Cameron and Clegg sets have steered through the whirlpools without hitting the rocks. David Cameron, the 19th
Two years ago, I put together a proposal for a book about the coming sea change in British politics. It was going to document the resurgence of a political clique that, until recently, had been written off as a busted flush. How had David Cameron, the grandson of a baronet and a member of the
My wife, a keen gardener, has a cold-frame forcing pen. It contains privileged seedlings which, thus sheltered, are hardened off before planting. These are the star blooms of seasons to come. In Britain’s New Establishment we call such specimens ‘ministerial special advisers’. They are placed in the Whitehall cold-frame and given special treatment. Within a
It isn’t spending cuts Those arguing against spending cuts have recently adopted a one-word argument: Ireland. The case it stands for is as simple as it is bogus. Ireland had a deficit, now even worse than Britain’s. It adopted an agenda of sharp public spending cuts, on the same logic used by the British government.
As a hardened opponent of military interventionism and international war crimes tribunals, I find I am often floored when Rwanda is invoked. ‘How can you possibly advocate standing idly by when hundreds of thousands of people are being massacred?’ is a difficult question to answer. The events in Rwanda in 1994 have become the supreme
David Cameron’s Conservative party has several uniquely destructive traits. But perhaps foremost is that it believes the lies of its enemies. And even when it doesn’t, it panders to them. A perfect example arose three years ago when the shadow minister of homeland security, Patrick Mercer, gave a newspaper interview in which he mentioned the