Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
We all know what a city does when a local boy or girl has done good. But what do you do when the local boy turns out to have done very bad indeed? This is the dilemma facing the Georgian authorities in the city of Gori, not far from the boundary line of South Ossetia.
The death of the author and journalist Gitta Sereny earlier this month drew some strangely critical notices. One piece even tried to blame her for a current cultural tendency to claim people are not responsible for their own actions. Though this was a dissenting view, there was a more general seam of criticism which ran
‘God speed’ was apparently what Martin McGuinness said to the Queen when they met a short time ago. I wonder what she, and the Duke of Edinburgh, would have liked to say to him? Of all the things that the Queen should be asked to do in her Jubilee year, perhaps the most cruel has
Two sentences in the speech by the Director General of the Security Service, Jonathan Evans, yesterday evening have drawn particular notice. They are his statement that parts of the Arab world after the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ have become: ‘a more permissive environment for Al Qaeda’ and also that: ‘a small number of British would be
A few years back the radio disc jockey John Peel died. Some public sorrow was expressed and soon Tony Blair issued a press release explaining his personal sadness. A little while later someone else who was popular died and the same thing happened. A few days later still and hundreds of thousands of people were
I have only just discovered Emily Thornberry, Labour MP for Islington South, by catching up on last week’s Question Time. What a terrible experience. Thornberry did not only show what we must hope is her worst side, but displayed the worst of modern British politics. Answering a question about ‘problem families’, her fellow-panellist Peter Hitchens
The late Auberon Waugh advised his readers to reflect on the case of David Flannigan when considering the munificent compensation often awarded to people after awful events. Mr Flannigan had been estranged from his parents for two years before the night of 21 December 1988, when Pan Am Flight 103 fell onto the family’s house
New Martin Amis novels haven’t always received a fine reception of late. So much so that even tepid praise now reads generously. In the current magazine Philip Hensher reviews the latest, Lionel Asbo, and closes by declaring it, ‘not as bad as I feared.’ Having just finished it I think there is much more to
Even for people on the same side of an argument, opinion is often wildly divided. Among those of us who believe government should support civil marriage equality, this morning’s papers (£), and specifically Church of England fears that the religious will be ‘forced’ to carry out same-sex weddings, re-opens a fundamental division of opinion.
A very lively and enjoyable Any Questions last night from the beautiful town of Aldborough in North Yorkshire. The question which seemed to bring out perhaps the most passion from an already very passionate audience concerned the BBC’s coverage of the Jubilee celebrations. I didn’t envy Jonathan Dimbleby having to chair that one. No least
I thought Spectator readers may like to know that I will be one of the panellists on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Any Questions’ tonight at 20.00. The programme is coming from Aldborough, North Yorkshire and my fellow panellists are Alan Johnson (Labour), David Davis (Conservative) and Salma Yaqoob (Respect).
More than a week on from the massacre at Houla, another hundred or so men, women and children have been slaughtered in Hama, Syria. They were apparently stabbed to death and some of their bodies then burned. David Cameron has responded to this by describing the killings as ‘brutal and sickening’. William Hague had previously
Back in November I wrote a cover story for The Spectator arguing that the trend in North Africa for those countries which had thrown off their dictators appeared to be more in the direction of Winter than that of Spring. Since then there have been many developments, including the first round of the Egyptian Presidential
What a strange place Britain has become. You sometimes need some time away to realise quite how strange. Take yesterday’s main story: the latest paedophile rape-gang case from the north of England. The judge in the trial told the men, during sentencing, that they had selected their victims ‘because they were not part of your
Who on earth does Nicolas Sarkozy think he is? The answer, of course, is President of the French Republic. And from that position — and propelled by the Toulouse shootings and doubtless by the imminent election — he has chosen to expel a number of people from the Republic whose views, actions and teachings are
George Galloway has tragically demonstrated that sectarian politics are now alive and well in Britain. The other week Ken Livingstone appeared at a London mosque and promised to make London a ‘beacon of Islam’ and last week went on to dismiss Jews as unlikely to vote Labour because they are ‘rich’. Now we see Galloway
One staple of our national comedy is that someone must always fill the role of ‘Barmy Bishop’. While at Durham David Jenkins occupied the position, as perhaps in recent years has Rowan Williams. Certainly Richard Holloway recalls the morning while Bishop of Edinburgh when he woke to discover he had become the incumbent. His liberal
Baroness Ashton has managed a return to diplomatic form by comparing the murder yesterday of three children and a Rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse with ‘what is happening in Gaza.’ Plenty of people have already deplored her comments. But they present an opportunity to address one of the underlying and too infrequently asked
With some right-wing voices — including Catholic Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Tory MP Peter Bone and the Daily Telegraph — speaking out against same-sex marriage, here’s a piece Douglas Murray wrote for The Spectator in October arguing that conservatives should instead be welcoming it: In America a new generation of Republicans is challenging the traditional consensus
This post, marking the 40th anniversary of the Aldershot bombing, was published earlier on the Biteback website. But as its author, Douglas Murray, is a regular here on Coffee House, and as its subject matter is so important, we thought we’d re-post it here: The 30th January this year was the 40th anniversary of Bloody
