Alice Loxton is a historian and author of Uproar! Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London, out now.
40 min listen
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian Alice Loxton, whose new book Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives is just out in paperback. In it, she tells the story of the early lives of individuals as disparate as the Venerable Bede and Vivienne Westwood. On the podcast, Alice
38 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale analyses the splits in Labour over direction and policy (1:27); Angus Colwell asks if the ‘lanyard class’ are the new enemy (6:21); Alice Loxton explains why bite-sized histories have big appeal (9:58); Lloyd Evans reports on how Butlin’s is cashing in on nostalgia (15:00); Richard Bratby on Retrospect
44 min listen
The real Brexit betrayal: Starmer vs the workers ‘This week Starmer fell… into the embrace of Ursula von der Leyen’ writes Michael Gove in our cover article this week. He writes that this week’s agreement with the EU perpetuates the failure to understand Brexit’s opportunities, and that Labour ‘doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t exist to
My friend Ruby recently started a TikTok channel called ‘Too Long Didn’t Read’. With boundless enthusiasm and a colourful wardrobe, she prances around Hampstead Heath, summarising classic novels in 60 seconds. The channel ‘sums up anything ever written so you can talk about it to your mates’. Ruby is not alone in her approach of
43 min listen
This week: why is economic growth eluding Labour? ‘Growing pains’ declares The Spectator’s cover image this week, as our political editor Katy Balls, our new economics editor Michael Simmons, and George Osborne’s former chief of staff Rupert Harrison analyse the fiscal problems facing the Chancellor. ‘Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall,’ write Katy and Michael,
37 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Hugh Schofield asks why there is no campaign to free the novelist Boualem Sansal (1:26); The Spectator’s arts editor, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, reacts to the magazine’s campaign against frivolous funding and, continuing the campaign, Michael Simmons wonders if Britain is funding organisations that wish us harm (8:00); Lisa Haseldine reflects on
On 27 January 1688, Mary Hobry, a French midwife living in London, strangled a man to death. The corpse lay in her bed for several days before she carved it up. Then, in the dead of night, she used her petticoat to drag the dismembered body through the neighbourhood – Castle Street, Drury Lane, Parker’s
The Guild Chapel in Stratford-upon-Avon presents its congregation with a vision of terror: a medieval Doom painting depicting the Day of Judgment. On the left are those who have behaved themselves – the Saved – who joyously bound towards the gates of Paradise. On the right, sinners pay the price for falling short of the
In the course of British history there have been few royals with a childhood as traumatic as that of Elizabeth I. She endured the torment of her mother Anne Boleyn’s execution, her father’s death, the comings and goings of four stepmothers, sexual abuse from a stepfather (who was executed soon after), the death of a
Last Wednesday morning, the Cellarium Café of Westminster Abbey was filled with excitable French visitors. It was the press preview of Notre-Dame de Paris, The Augmented Exhibition. ‘What do you make of our croissants?’ I ask the sharp suited French curator. ‘Comme ci, comme ça’ he chuckles, taking another bite. While Notre Dame undergoes restoration
I am chatting to Jon, an ex-tree surgeon from Derby, in one of the galleries of the British Museum. He became an amateur metal detectorist when his wife, Julie, gave him the kit on Valentine’s Day a few years ago. ‘Our honeymoon to Barbados was cancelled because of Covid’, he explains, ‘so this present was
Our national conversation is overwhelmed by tittle-tattle, rumour and gossip. Last week, a salacious email listing George Osborne’s alleged improprieties was circulated among the Westminster bubble. Inevitably, it was then circulated to everybody else, too. Meanwhile, the internet is aflutter with rumours about the identity of a BBC journalist who’s alleged to have paid a teenager
