Bruce Anderson is The Spectator's drink critic, and was the magazine's political editor
In the mid-18th century, London was awash with gin. Socially-conscious members of the bourgeoisie believed that this was the root of all evil, contributing to crime and depravity. Fielding and Hogarth combined to denounce gin as responsible for ‘the reigning vices peculiar to the lower classes of the people’. Both of them hoped to persuade
To paraphrase Shakespeare, the whirligig of time brings in… more whirligigs. Four years ago, few people thought that Donald Trump had a real prospect of becoming President of the United States. There were suggestions that Mr Trump himself did not take his chances too seriously. He might have seen the campaign as a way of
An open letter to Boris Johnson: People, even including your opponents, are getting used to the idea that you are not only the Prime Minister, but likely to remain so for some time to come. Yet before we settle down under the new regime, we should remember just how incredible this would have seemed, well
In clubs and other admirable locations throughout the civilised world, glasses have been raised and toasts proposed. But this was not a prelude to drinking-song conviviality. Voices were sombre, eyes misty. Thousands of friends were in stricken mourning, lamenting the passing of a great man: a friend to many, a prophet to many more. Roger
Journalists exaggerate, often reaching for superlatives to chronicle mildly interesting events. Even so, there are times when it is necessary to become hyperbolic. 2019 was an extraordinary year. As Chou En-lai might have said, it is too early to assess its significance. We will be doing that for at least the next 20 years. Indeed,
Christmas: without being grand and Proustian, this is a season when time present inevitably takes one back to time past. When we are very young, despite the grown-ups’ best efforts to promote moral uplift, Christmas means presents. I remember being given King Solomon’s Mines when I was nine or ten. No book has ever thrilled
Much of the political class is still in a state of shock. Many are tempted to echo Lord Melbourne: ‘What all the wise men promised has not happened and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’ This was an extraordinary election because underneath all the stress it was a very
Everyone seems agreed. Although the numbers may not have moved much, this election is still wide open. So anyone who tries to predict the outcome in the final days risks looking very stupid. Even so, I will take that risk. The campaign has been simultaneously tense and dull. There have been no dramatic errors: no real excitements.
I wonder how they do things now at Tory headquarters. For the ’79 election, the preparations had been completed weeks in advance. Press conferences had been planned on the basis of a four-week campaign, press releases drafted and shadow ministers told when they would be needed in London to go on the platform. Then the
So what is going to happen? There appear to be grounds for quiet confidence about the result. Almost all the polls are showing the same outcome: a twelve-point Tory lead. The data suggests that most voters have made up their minds about Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson and that is not good news for Corbyn.
In the era of vinyl, lost in one of Bruckner’s longueurs, it could be hard to tell what was stuck, the record or the composer. Sir Jim Gastropodi would make regular appearances in the Peter Simple column, conducting the Soup Hales Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Bruckner’s interminable symphony. Despite Boris Johnson’s attempts to
First, an apology. In my last column, I appeared to be saying that good champagne does not age. This must have been the impact of Brexit fatigue, for I had meant to write the exact opposite, along the lines of age cannot wither it (as it were) nor custom stale. Good — and especially great
The other night, I dreamt about Brexit. Awakening to the oppression of an urgent task, it took me a few seconds to realise that my only task was to go back to sleep. I described all this to an MP friend, who said that he had done the same several times, as had a number
Poor Old Girl. The final act may not have been sanglante, but as the third volume of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher makes clear, it was sad. It may seem unwise to expend great praise on a contemporary book before time has had a chance to lend perspective: not in this case. Time’s verdict
My friend Dominic decided that it was time to convoke a lunch. There were matters to discuss, including that perennial topic, the travails of the Tory party. We met at the end of last week, before the Labour conference. In the old pre-Blair days, Labour conferences were generally run as benefit matches for the Conservatives,
I have a friend who insists that he takes little interest in politics. Even so, the other evening he came out with three sentences which take us straight to the heart of our present discontents. ‘I’m sick to death of talking about Brexit. Yet I can’t stop talking about Brexit. Why don’t the politicians just
What do you get if you cross a dyslexic, an insomniac and an agnostic? Someone who wakes up at 4 a.m. and says: ‘Is there a dog?’ There was a lot of dog talk this weekend, and about the tributes they bring to their owners in the shooting field. A South African who had just
‘The Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.’ Is there a more charming passage in the Bible? It makes God sound like an English gentleman, vastly superior to Baal or Ashtoreth or any other rival. But at the end of his stroll, Jehovah would condemn Adam and his descendants to
We are living through the most dramatic period in British peacetime history since the agitations leading up to the Great Reform Bill – and, irrespective of Brexit, there is more to come. The UK is about to experience a revolution in government. This will take one of three forms. There could be a chassis revolution,
Foolish me. I could have been writing this by the shore of Lake Trasimene, with only one problem: how to transmit it to London. Last time I stayed in the delightful house there, the technology was still in the era of Hannibal’s victory. There was no wifi, only spasmodic mobile-phone reception, and the nearest English
