Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator
Nigel Lawson once wrote that ‘the National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion’. It’s a justly celebrated line because it rings so true – though the second half of the sentence, even more uncomfortably true, is invariably left out: ‘… with those who practise in it regarding themselves as
There was never going to be a happy ending to the story of Alfie Evans, the 23-month-old boy treated at Alder Hey hospital, Liverpool, for an undiagnosed neurological condition that destroyed his brain. But somehow the British establishment has contrived to make a tragic situation worse – to the point where large swathes of European
Could there be a Trump-style upset when the Irish vote next month on whether to repeal the country’s ban on abortion? That’s the question I discuss in the latest Holy Smoke podcast with my guest Tony Trowbridge, an Australian who became an Irish citizen when he was studying law at Trinity College, Dublin, in the
Glenn Gould used to say that Mozart died too late rather than too early. The remark was intended to get up the nose of Mozart-lovers and it succeeded. What a nerve, coming from a pianist whose own reputation peaked in his early 20s, with his first Goldbergs, and was especially tarnished by his Mozart piano
Last week The Spectator published a fascinating and mischievous piece by Ysenda Maxtone Graham entitled ‘A tale of two Sarahs: the cuddly bishop vs the terrifying cardinal’. The first Sarah is Sarah Mullally, who is just about to take office as the first woman Bishop of London; she’s a former nurse – indeed, the former
What rubbish we British talk about American Christianity. For example, we’re still convinced that hardcore fundamentalist evangelicals can swing elections. But do Americans themselves really understand what’s happening to religion in their own country? In the new Holy Smoke podcast, I’m joined by Professor Stephen Bullivant, Britain’s leading expert on patterns of churchgoing, to discuss
Fake news is dangerous because it uses ‘distorted data’ to manipulate the public, Pope Francis warned us in January. Well, he should know. Yesterday it emerged that his press office doctored a photograph of a letter from Benedict XVI in which the Pope Emeritus apparently praised some new books containing Francis’s collected writings. Benedict wrote
Five years ago, the name of the Pope was announced from the balcony of St Peter’s and I was given less than an hour by the Daily Telegraph to write an article about a man I knew virtually nothing about. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, had been fairly low down on
I’m unlucky with Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. Twice in the past year I’ve bolted for the exit as soon the pianist crossed the finishing line. The first performance was phoned in to the Royal Festival Hall by a washed-out Maurizio Pollini. The second was musical chloroform, so dreary that it would be cruel to name the
As I write this, my Twitter timeline is filling up with tributes to Billy Graham, who has died at the age of 99. Donald Trump describes him as ‘the GREAT Billy Graham’. Well said, Mr President; for once, those Trumpian capital letters are perfectly judged. What’s interesting is that so many of those tweets come
Hard left, my arse. Sorry to be vulgar, but surely that’s how Jim Royle, couch-potato patriarch of that glorious sitcom The Royle Family, would have reacted to reports that the ‘hard left’ Momentum movement is planning a ‘massacre of the moderates’ in the parliamentary Labour party. Don’t get me wrong. Having seized control of Labour’s
Twitter brings out a mean streak in some people that can take the breath away. And I should know. I was re-reading my old tweets the other day and thinking: good God, if this was my actual conversation at a dinner party I’d have to get my coat – remember the bloke in The Fast
Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga of Honduras, one of the most influential figures in the Catholic Church, has been accused of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Catholic university in his ceremonial role as its chancellor – and of investing more than $1.2 million in London financial companies, some of which has now allegedly vanished. These
We’re closing 2017 by republishing our twelve most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 9: Damian Thompson on Pope Francis: On 2 January, the Vatican published a letter from Pope Francis to the world’s bishops in which he reminded them that they must show ‘zero tolerance’ towards child abuse. The next day, the American Week magazine
Imagine if we had access to over a hundred Shakespeare plays in which the Bard was at or near the top of his game – but we didn’t bother to watch them and couldn’t even remember their names. Bach has as good a claim as any composer to be the Shakespeare of music, yet a
There’s a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie in which Tippi Hedren is emptying a safe while a cleaning lady silently drags her mop towards her. Can Hedren, playing the disturbed Marnie, slip down the stairs before the woman turns her head? I felt a twinge of the same panic last week interviewing the composer Nico
In Dan Brown’s new thriller, Origin, we are introduced to the Catholic church’s sinister far-right rival — a paranoid worldwide cult dedicated to undermining the reforms of Pope Francis. This toxic outfit has its own pope, who runs it from his ‘Vatican’ at El Palmar de Troya, on the Andalusian plain; hence its name, the
If two concert pianists are performing a work written for two grand pianos, there are two ways you can position the instruments. They can sit side by side, an arrangement known as ‘twin beds’. Or they can be slotted together so the performers face each other. That’s called a ‘69’. When Martha Argerich and Stephen
Our guest on today’s Holy Smoke podcast is A.N. Wilson, author of a hugely admired biography of Queen Victoria and – as you’ll hear – the most mischievous intellectual in the land. Cristina Odone and I started out by asking about Victoria’s vigorous (and possibly whisky-fuelled) persecution of Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England: the
You must listen to the feisty new episode of the Holy Smoke podcast, in which Cristina Odone and I ask our guest Jeremy Vine whether, if he were alive in the 21st century, Jesus would have been on Twitter. If so, what would happen to him? Jeremy – whose new book What I Learnt discusses
