Andy Warhol believed that the greatness of America lay in how the richest consumers bought exactly the same things as the poorest. ‘You can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and, just think, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you
29 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Owen Matthews says that Venice’s residents never stop complaining (1:11); Bijan Omrani reads his church notebook (7:33); Andrew Hankinson reviews Tiffany Jenkins’s Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life (13:54); as 28 Years Later is released, Laurie Penny explains the politics behind Alex Garland’s film franchise
I once heard an American complain that, being married to an Englishwoman, he was regularly baffled by the contents of his kitchen cupboards – salad cream, Ambrosia custard and Robinsons barley water. It was ‘like industrial processed food but from the Shire’. It is probably this quality of baffling foreigners that allegedly enabled drug runners
I assumed that the headline in the Mail about ‘pasty wars’ would involve some grievous insult to Cornish pride, including something other than beef, onions, potato and turnip; perhaps pointing out that the turnip was actually a swede. Instead, it was about how a deli in Mousehole, where I live, was charging a tenner for
One of my favourite dad jokes – and, since I became a father, I have many – is to respond to the question ‘How did you sleep?’ with ‘I lay horizontally in a darkened room with my eyes closed’. But it has never been that simple for me. All my life I have suffered from
48 min listen
On this week’s Christmas Out Loud – part two: Andrew Watts goes to santa school (1:11); Marcus Walker reads his priest’s notebook (7:20); Ali Kefford spends Christmas on patrol with submariners (12:34); Roger Lewis says good riddance to 2024, voiced by the actor Robert Bathurst (20:57); Ayaan Hirsh Ali argues that there is a Christian revival
Whenever my son’s primary school ring up, they have, very sensibly, a calming form of words: ‘It’s the school here but don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong.’ It became clear, however, that Mrs Gribben had not thought through the rest of the conversation: ‘Our Father Christmas has dropped out, and we thought of you because, well…’
43 min listen
This week: Team Trump – who’s in, and who’s out? To understand Trumpworld you need to appreciate it’s a family affair, writes Freddy Gray in the magazine this week. For instance, it was 18-year-old Barron Trump who persuaded his father to do a series of long ‘bro-casts’ with online male influencers such as Joe Rogan.
A week away from the American election, and the polls cannot tell us who will be president. But can they ever? A poll is, as the pundits always remind us, a snapshot of public opinion, not a prediction. Nate Silver himself said that anyone dissecting an individual poll is ‘just doing astrology’. So what predictions
Foraging has become a sign of status rather than a lack of it and seaweed is perhaps the most abundant wild food of all. The alternative is mushrooms, but I’ve always thought fungus-hunting a bit too wild; the possibility of a first-class risotto being offset by the risk of death or, worse, expanded consciousness. Rotting seaweed
32 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Ian Thomson reflects on his childhood home following the death of his sister (1:20); Andrew Watts argues that the public see MPs as accountable for everything though they’re responsible for little (7:40); Sam Leith reveals the surprising problem of poetical copyright (13:47); Helen Barrett reviews Will Noble’s book Croydonopolis and explores the
There is nothing so ex as an ex-MP, Tam Dalyell used to say. Now that parliament has returned from recess, and the newly elected MPs are no longer described as ‘newly elected MPs’, it may seem that the old contrarian had a point. But the truth is that being an ex-MP’s staffer is as ex
You might remember that short period during the pandemic when eggs were unavailable. I was very annoyed that the one period when I had time to cook breakfast in the mornings there was no breakfast to cook. However, I was finally able to persuade my wife that we needed to keep chickens. Purely for logistical
Last week, Carl Elsener of Victorinox, makers of the Swiss Army knife (all other manufacturers must refer to their products as ‘Swiss-style knives’), announced that the company is working to develop a knife without any blades in anticipation of modern legislation and safety-conscious consumers. A cutting-edge Swiss Army knife will no longer have a cutting
I miss kippers. My wife won’t let me eat them at home, and they have become a rarity in restaurants. I stayed in a luxury hotel last month, and the manager was telling me that if I wanted anything – valet parking, room service, breakfast after 10.30 a.m. – I had only to ask. When
The words ‘immersive experience’ have always suggested, to me, a rather strained hour or two smiling patiently at unemployed actors pretending to be ghosts or personages from the olden days or, if I’m really lucky, chocolatiers who are not called Willy Wonka for legal reasons. In fact, all the publicity for the ‘Fish and Feast
The Office for National Statistics has been publishing interesting insights from the last census – perhaps to counter the bad press that censuses get at this time of year, forcing pregnant Jewish women to travel to municipalities in the West Bank – and its latest release shows that 18.1 per cent of people in Cornwall
28 min listen
On the podcast: In his cover piece for the mag this week, political scientist, Yascha Mounk has written about why identity politics has polarised our understanding of race. And why the left has come to divide groups into oversimplified categories of ‘the oppressors’ and ‘the oppressed’. Also this week: Can we trust photographs to paint
Next year, Exeter University will offer an MA in Magic and Occult Science: the first of its kind in a British university. The new course has led to newspaper headlines about a ‘real-life Hogwarts’ and questions as to whether magic is as worth studying as say, economics. The course director, Professor Emily Selove, refused my
In the final series of the Netflix programme The Crown, Princess Diana will appear as a ghost. We are told that her apparitions will be ‘thoughtful and sensitive’ – which is rather disappointing for anyone hoping for her to have a recurring role, like Marty Hopkirk in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), perhaps wearing that white
