James Foley’s family has begged people not to share images of him being beheaded. The Met has warned that watching and disseminating the film of the murder could constitute an offence under terrorism laws. The Spectator of 1886 would have approved of the ISIS media blackout hashtag. A General Order was issued last week to
There’s been a lot written this week about whether or not to fight the Islamic State in Iraq. This time the consensus among Spectator writers is that Britain should. There’s a clear moral case, but is it in our interests to go to war? The first time this question came up was in 1839 when
It’s 50 years since the death of Ian Fleming and The Spectator has always taken James Bond seriously. The writer of the Spectator’s Notebook in 1962 went along eagerly to see Bond’s first screen appearance. It hasn’t seemed to matter but it seemed odd that the director hadn’t explained some key parts of the plot.
The 1914 editions of The Spectator in the days surrounding the declaration of war give a sense of bewilderment. At first they couldn’t believe it would happen. After Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Serbian nationalists on 28th June 1914, Austria-Hungary’s handed Serbia a list of demands, which looked like a provocation of war: ‘It
If Scotland goes independent in September, who knows what patriotism will feel like. This may be a last chance to savour some of this magazine’s most passionate expressions of British pride. In 1828, this article laid out the difference between a ‘genuine Briton’ and a Liberal. ‘The disposition of a genuine Briton is to make
Spectator reviewers over the years have had a difficult time with Nadine Gordimer’s books. Gordimer (1923 – 2014), who won the Nobel Prize for literature and was one of the leading campaigners against apartheid, has died at the age of 90. Her books are passionately political and sometimes maddeningly abstract; some found them poetic, others
David Cameron has promised to change the law to make it harder to go on strike if he wins the next election. The Spectator has generally been in favour of tightening up strike laws, not trusting union leaders to do the right thing. In 1919, just as a law banning the police from striking was
There’s nothing like a caliphate to rally disparate groups. The Sunni Islamic organisation ISIS has recruited fighters from all over the world with its dream of a single Muslim state, which now apparently exists in parts of Iraq and Syria. Across Europe, young men are packing their bags and heading to the east to join
Lillian Hellman must be a maddening subject for a biographer. The author Mary McCarthy’s remark that ‘every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the”’ wasn’t far off. Navigating through the hall of mirrors that Hellman left behind, trying to sort fact from self-aggrandising fiction, seems to have worked Dorothy Gallagher into a
Tracey Emin’s bed is to be sold at auction this summer with a guide price of £800,000 to £1.2 million, although the man who sold it to Charles Saatchi has said it’s priceless. Emin was part of the British art movement in the ‘90s that gave Richard Dorment trouble at dinner parties; this scene is
The World Health Organisation is voting on whether to destroy the last few remaining samples of the smallpox virus. Smallpox is the only virus that affects humans that’s ever been eradicated, but it took nearly 200 years from the discovery of the smallpox vaccination in 1796 to eradication in 1979. In the 19th century the
In the lead up to next week’s European elections, voters seem to be disenchanted with the European Union. Around a quarter of the seats in the European parliament are expected to go to anti-EU or protest parties – almost double the proportion those groups won in the last elections five years ago. Ukip is in
More than 200 Nigerian girls are missing after being abducted from school by Boko Haram militants nearly a month ago. One of the group’s leaders has said he’s planning to sell them as slaves. It’s thought they were kidnapped because the Islamist Boko Haram doesn’t approve of girls’ education. As the evidence mounts that educating
Fifteen years ago, Sugata Mitra, a scientist from Calcutta, conceived of an interesting experiment. He went to a slum in Delhi, installed a computer into a public wall in the manner of a cash machine, then he waited to see what would happen. As he had expected, the local children crowded round and began to
This week South Africa has held events to mark 20 years of democracy. Simon Jenkins, writing after the first election that included black people, was deeply moved: Democracy is an unromantic ideology, but the old girl can still draw a tear. I have never witnessed a political event to compare with the South African election,
David Cameron has said Christians should be more evangelical “about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people’s lives”. In an article for The Church Times he said he wanted to infuse politics with Christian values such as responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility and love. In recent
In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen did a good job of showing how foolish it is to be obsessed by previous generations who’ve passed through Paris. Going back through the years, each group of geniuses turns out to be just as drunk and silly as the next, albeit with longer cigarette holders. Tilar Mazzeo, who
As the Irish president is making the first visit to the United Kingdom by an Irish head of state, some people have asked what’s taken him so long. The Spectator’s archive offers some insights into the two countries’ rocky relationship. The British government has often been criticised for not doing more to mitigate the effects
There have been some rocky relationships in the news this year. As well as Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s conscious uncoupling, world leaders have also had problems. Vladimir Putin’s divorce has just been finalised, and the newly single Francois Hollande this week welcomed his ex-girlfriend Segolene Royal to the French cabinet. So, first of all
The jury at Max Clifford’s trial have had a tough time of it trying not to get the giggles, as his alleged victims wrangle with medical experts over what constitutes a ‘freakishly small’ penis. In the archive, there are reports of other moments that have compromised the solemnity of a British courtroom. At York in
