The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Early on in this fascinating history Stephen Alford makes an important point: because Elizabeth I and the settlement between monarchy, church and state survived, because the threat of foreign invasion was thwarted or failed to materialise, and because the sense of national identity fostered by the Tudors proved robust, we see that first Elizabethan age
In 1904, the great Halford Mackinder, founder of the modern academic discipline of geography, published one of the most subversive maps of the century. It might seem unlikely that a scientific representation of the physical world projected according to mathematical principles onto a two-dimensional surface could mess with your head, but that is the unmistakable
In the 1820s and 30s, London used about 20 million goose quills a year. The government’s Stationery Office on its own was still getting through half a million a year in the 1890s, roughly a quill a clerk a day. The administration of Victorian Britain and its global empire rested on a vast flock of
Like the deserts of the Middle East, the barren islands of the South China Sea now loom as a new theatre of war. Asian countries, indeed America, too, are at odds over how to deal with this power-play by a rising China — if that’s what it is; or scramble for maritime minerals; or as recently
Patrick Hennessey was a founder member of the Junior Officers’ Reading Club, formed when the Grenadier Guards toured Iraq in 2006. He is the author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club — the story of how a ‘wise-arse Thatcherite kid’ became a thoughtful soldier. It is among the best examples of British military witness written
The 1996 Spectator/ Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize was won by Miranda France. Here, she shares her experience of winning the award and visiting the Spectator office and then-editor Frank Johnson to get her £3,000 cheque. Miranda France has since had four books published. Her Shiva Naipaul-winning entry, ‘Bad Times in Buenos Aires’, can be
Somehow, sex is less appealing when it’s characterised as ‘equitable return’. Though I’ve heard the phrase used in a similar context a dozen times since, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant when I first encountered it three years ago. I’d been drafted in to persuade a wealthy businessman at an art auction that taxidermy
For many of us the Battle of Midway is just one more Hollywood spectacular in, to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain, a far-away sea of which we know little. But having recently taken a closer look at the battle I am struck both by what was at stake and what the consequences of the American victory were
‘Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford’ ‘Here lies wise and valiant dust, Huddled up ‘twixt fit and just: STRAFFORD, who was hurried hence ‘Twixt treason and convenience. He spent his time here in a mist; A Papist, yet a Calvinist. His prince’s nearest joy, and grief; He had, yet wanted all relief. The prop and
‘This man makes a pseudonym and crawls behind it like a worm,’ wrote Sylvia Plath in The Fearful. The weekend’s literary pages were gripped by a story of pseudonyms. R.J. Ellory, the well-regarded and critically acclaimed crime writer, has been caught penning rave reviews of his own work, and damning that of his rivals, under
Liberal Democrat party president Tim Farron is on the books blog this evening sharing his favourite reads. He reveals which book he feels best sums up ‘now’ (which we hope for his sake says nothing about the state of his party), and says he’d most like to be a woman exploring outer space if he
Tim Farron is president of the Liberal Democrats and shares his reading list with Spectator readers. Hopefully he is not thinking of the state of his own party when he suggests Lord of the Flies as the book that best sums up ‘now’, but in case he is, the next book he plans to read
I’ve only just got around to watching Tom Holland’s documentary for Channel 4 from earlier this week: ‘Islam: the untold story.’ It had some good things in it, despite suffering from the two problems all documentaries now suffer from: attention-grabbing statements at the end of segments which are not followed up on, and endless shots
As Roger McGough approaches 75, his latest collection of poems As Far As I Know shows him writing with the same blend of mischievous word play, subversion of cliché and distinctive sense of humor that makes him one of Britain’s most popular poets. McGough became a prominent force in the late 1960s when his poems
The idea came to me after I had just got back from South America after a long trip to Peru. Perhaps because I was badly jetlagged, everything about England looked strange, different — and certainly worthy of as much exploration as I would give to a foreign country. The few other times I’ve ever had
Mr Steerpike was overcome with joy when he read the press release from Pippa Middleton’s publishers. It told him that her forthcoming book Celebrate will be a ‘useful, practical and inspiring journey into British-themed occasions, focusing on tradition.’ Well, thank goodness for that. What a treat. Over to the sister-in-waiting: ‘This book is designed to be
After the record-breaking success of the Fifty Shades trilogy, publishers are desperately trying to answer the multi-million dollar question, what comes next? What will all those millions of readers who have raced through Fifty Shades want to read now? With a depressing lack of imagination, many publishers seem to have landed on the answer of
I first knew Jeremy Vine as a very young, charming, earnest and totally driven political correspondent for the BBC in the 1980s. So when I started reading It’s All News to Me, I was dreading a rather worthy read. I was delightfully disappointed. This is a wonderful bitchfest of not quite malicious gossip and the
David Lomon was one of the lucky ones. While fighting in Aragon in south-west Spain in the spring of 1938, the former salesman from Hackney was captured by one of the 100,000 Italian soldiers sent by Mussolini to fight for General Franco’s forces. Incarcerated in a Francoist concentration camp, his experiences were horrifying — brutal
The 2007 Spectator/ Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize was won by Clarissa Tan. The prize, named after the late Trinidadian author, is for ‘the most acute and profound observation of a culture evidently alien to the writer’. The judges that year included William Boyd, Matthew d’Ancona (then editor of The Spectator) and Mark Amory (literary editor of The
The Spectator/ Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for the year 2000 was won by Mary Wakefield. The judges included Antony Beevor; Patrick Marhnam; Boris Johnson, then editor of the magazine; and Mark Amory, who was and still is the Spectator’s literary editor. Mary is now Deputy Editor of the Spectator. The Shiva Naipaul prize is awarded for travel
In honour of the Essex lion, which seems now to have passed into legend, here is another urban myth. This one is subeditorial. It concerns what was said to be the worst headline ever published in one of the regional newspapers where I was a trainee. Since I’m presenting it in its pure mythic form,
‘Village’, to most middle-Englanders, conjures up a cosy, living community. Perhaps the post office is threatened with closure or the bus timetable is to be cut, but the hanging baskets continue to be tended, the village green still hosts games of cricket, there are moneyed retirees or commuters eager to buy the houses. It is
Over on the books blog, SNP MP Pete Wishart shares his favourite books with Spectator readers. He reveals which tomes he’d save from a burning Scottish – rather than British- Library. There’s plenty more Scots culture on offer, along with a tiger who came to tea, and the more practical reading material he’d set for
Peter Wishart is the SNP Member of Parliament for Perth and North Perthshire, and the party’s Westminster spokesman on culture, media and sport, among other areas. He shares his own books choices with Spectator readers this weekend. 1) Which books are on your bedside table at the moment? On my bedside table (or rather bedside
Anyone interested in art holidaying in the Lake District this summer — or indeed taking a short break in the Lakes — is in for a treat. The Lakeland Arts Trust, which administers both Blackwell and Abbot Hall, has mounted a pair of exhibitions which offers a range of painting and sculpture a good deal
Catherine the Great was born neither a Catherine nor with any prospects of greatness. As Sophie Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst she was a minor German princess with modest expectations, but when the Empress Elizabeth of Russia chose her to be the consort of her nephew and heir, the Grand Duke Peter, Sophie’s and Russia’s fates
She’s certainly a class act. But how did she manage it? Nina Raine, the 36-year-old writer-director, has established a formidable position in the British theatre. Her first play, Rabbit, opened at a pub venue in Islington in 2007. It transferred to New York and has since been performed all over the world. Last year she
Just a snippet on an edition of Today last spring taken from the programme that had just won an esteemed Sony Gold radio award was enough to create an impact. Ray and Violet Donovan were talking about the murder of their son, Chris, on a feature made by the Prison Radio Association. The programme was