Mark Greaves

As the Spectator held its inaugural health summit last week, the fraught issue of NHS funding was once again on the front pages. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, proposed a 10-year funding deal for the NHS. Two days later Theresa May announced there would be a ‘long-term funding plan’. However, while a multibillion pound cash

Artificial intelligence is about to transform healthcare. The claim is not being made by excitable tech gurus from Silicon Valley but by medics. Machines, having been fed enormous amounts of data, are developing algorithms that detect disease from X-rays and tissue samples. This is, potentially at least, a much cheaper and more efficient way to

Could cancer break the NHS? This was the provocative title of a debate at the British Museum hosted by The Spectator and sponsored by Philips. Two of the expert panellists suggested that it just might. Others were more optimistic. But all seemed to agree that, for the NHS to survive, bold action was required. First,

At a dinner on Tuesday 26th September at the Spectator’s offices, sponsored by Philips, entrepreneurs, doctors and healthcare experts discussed how new technology could ease pressure on the NHS – and whether the health service was equipped to take advantage of it. Guests included: Naushard Jabir, founder and CEO of Vida, Paul Bate, Director of

It was a close fight. Both sides at Tuesday night’s debate at IET London seemed to accept that trust in official health guidelines was running low. And, among the 200 or so members of the audience, that was certainly the case: a show of hands requested by the evening’s chair Andrew Neil at the start

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/workingwithal-qa-eda/media.mp3″ title=”Mark Greaves discusses the Church of England’s plans for growth” startat=1513] Listen [/audioplayer]A new mood has taken hold of Lambeth Palace. Officials call it urgency; critics say it is panic. The Church of England, the thinking goes, is about to shrink rapidly, even vanish in some areas, unless urgent action is taken. This

The sun has only just risen in Rome and we are standing bleary-eyed in a short queue outside the Vatican. Our guide, Tonia, takes us through security, and within minutes we are in a nearly empty Sistine Chapel. In an hour it will be crammed with tourists — sweating, gawping, getting in each other’s way.

Is any public service more reviled than social work? Policemen, when not drinking with journalists, chase down baddies; firefighters save babies, and doctors cure diseases. Social workers, on the other hand, take away people’s children. They miss catastrophic abuse. In no news story are they ever -heroic. The perception of social work is unremittingly grim.

Two marble graves are side by side. One is grey and encrusted, with moss growing over the top. The other is smooth and shiny white. It looks new but, in fact, like the grave next to it, it’s more than 100 years old. It’s not just been cleaned — its top layer has been shaved

Kieran Viljoen’s life sounds like a parable. Not long ago, back in South Africa, he spent his days in the depths of the ocean searching for diamonds. But for the past two months he has been living the life of a Benedictine monk. He is one of two interns at Quarr Abbey, a monastery on

Joanna Lumley and Sister Elizabeth Obbard are seated at the front of the church. Lumley is perched elegantly on the edge of her chair; Sister Elizabeth settles deep into hers, submerged under folds of habit. They are talking in front of an audience at the Carmelite church in Kensington, west London, about life as a

Marilynne Robinson, Obama’s favourite contemporary novelist, says we all have a duty to raise our intellectual game As a child Marilynne Robinson was enthralled by writing poetry. As an adult, she says, it has never been quite the same. ‘During a thunderstorm or something like that I would write some crazy poem and then hide