Lara Prendergast is executive editor of The Spectator. She hosts two Spectator podcasts, The Edition and Table Talk, and edits The Spectator’s food and drink coverage.
Back in February, Benefits Street star ‘White Dee’ promised to give David Cameron a ‘run for his money’. In her Spectator diary, she described how ‘Ladbrokes has made me 50-1 to be the next MP for Birmingham Ladywood, and until I read that patronising nonsense I wasn’t going to stand. Now, I think I will.
Juvenilia is the work produced during an artist’s youth. It would seem logical to think, therefore, that an artist’s output during their old age would be classified as ‘senilia’. Yet no such word exists. But how else to classify the three blockbuster exhibitions this year that deal with Matisse, Turner and Rembrandt’s late work? These
Islamic State (IS) have just released a new video that features the journalist John Cantlie. Until now, his whereabouts in Syria were unknown, but it now looks as if he has been captured by IS. This time, the video takes a different format. There is (thankfully) no beheading, but it’s sinister in different ways. Cantlie, believed
When I think back to history lessons at school, the predominant focus was always on war. From the Battle of Hastings to the Battle of Agincourt, the Crusades to Nazi Germany, the curriculum seemed jammed full of stories about aggressive military affairs. Fascinating, but it was a relief to reach sixth form and discover another
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Emma Barnett and Jamie Bartlett discuss the leaked photos” startat=1312] Listen [/audioplayer]Nobody wants naked photos of themselves leaked across the internet so a global network of creeps can beat off to them. But celebs and plebs alike are increasingly confronted by this unsavoury reality. Whether it’s anonymous hackers or enraged ex-boyfriends
The leader of Rotherham Council has resigned following the results of a report which found that at least 1,400 children were victims of ‘appalling’ sexual exploitation in the town during a sixteen year period. The report details the ‘blatant’ collective failures during most of Roger Stone’s leadership. Professor Alexis Jay, a former senior social worker
If you haven’t watched Vice News’s five-part documentary about Isis yet, I’d highly recommend it. They’ve gone where no other media company has managed: into the heart of the Islamic State. As a result, Isis and Vice have formed a bizarre symbiotic relationship. Both are youth-focused, both have global ambitions and both have a pioneering spirit. Even
War can reshape the medium of television. The First Gulf War was a landmark moment in broadcasting: CNN had reporters in Baghdad when the first bombs fell, no one else did, America was riveted and the concept of 24-hour news (accompanied by thousands of graphics) suddenly took off. And now, just as a third conflict
Jeff Koons’s ‘Bear and Policeman’ has been used to advertise the Hayward Gallery’s latest show The Human Factor (until 7 September). But don’t be fooled; this exploration of the human figure is neither cute nor cuddly. It includes photos of rotting corpses, mannequins made from animal guts and live bees. It’s more creepy than kitsch.
New powers to tackle the huge growth in ‘legal’ highs are set to be introduced. Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, is said to be pushing for the most radical move, a blanket ban on all psychoactive substances. My heart sinks. Do those at the top of government really think that a blanket ban
The Department of Education has published a damning report today which suggests there was an ‘aggressive Islamist agenda’ pursued in a number of the ‘Trojan horse’ schools in Birmingham. Peter Clarke, a former counter-terror chief, published the report, which found evidence of a coordinated plan to impose strict Islamic teaching on pupils. Michael Gove, the
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in Ukraine after being hit by a missile. It’s not the first civilian flight to have been shot down in error though. Here are four other times mistakes have been made in the past 60 years, and the Spectator’s responses to them: Iran Air Flight 655 (1988) On 3 July 1988, as
In the Independent this week, Yvette Cooper suggested that British boys should grow up as ‘confident feminists’. They need to have lessons in feminism to help them learn how to treat women, she argued. But school shouldn’t be a place where you indoctrinate pupils to believe a particular ideology. And feminism, for all its admirable achievements
What kind of idiot tries to stand in the way of a national child abuse panic? Matthew Parris, that’s who. In this week’s Spectator, he suggests that the panic about paedophilia is careering right out of control. Dr Liz Davies begs to differ. In her view, the inquiry is 20 years too late. In this
Uh oh. The ‘all-women shortlist’ is again being touted as a good idea for the Conservatives, this time by Nicky Morgan, the new women’s minister. When asked about using shortlists to increase the number of female MPs, she told a Mumsnet chat: ‘I do think the big issue is we just aren’t getting enough women coming forward
Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress has been a rich resource for artists. Film-makers recognise his modern moral subjects as an ancestor to the storyboard. But in this age of mass media can the format still hold its own and tell us something about ourselves? A new exhibition at the Foundling Museum (until 7 September) suggests so.
Oh come on internet. Pull yourself together. Michael Fabricant has tweeted about punching a woman and people are going mad. It’s a silly thing to tweet, but does anyone doubt that? It’s simply hyperbole, flounce, floridity. That’s sometimes what it takes to get noticed on Twitter. Plenty of people are guilty of this trope. Let’s not
Yesterday evening, I returned home, made a cup of tea and slumped down to catch up on the day’s news. A piece on Twitter caught my eye. Posted by Channel 4, it was titled ‘#Jihad: how ISIS is using social media to win support’. Click. Soon I was learning about how ISIS was calling for
I find it easy to forget that Piet Mondrian is a Dutch artist. The linear, gridlocked works he is famed for seem to beat with the energy of the New York metropolis. But it was not always so. His path to abstraction was a precarious one that bumped into a number of styles drifting round
Black cab drivers are striking in London today because they are angry that Uber – a rival taxi service supported by Google – is undercutting their market. They will argue that Uber’s drivers are using a smartphone app to calculate fares, despite it being illegal for private vehicles to be fitted with taximeters. I couldn’t
