Whatever happened to British ecology? I was thinking that when I read two reports in the Times this week, both pretty depressing. The first concerned a new study, based on maps, which suggests that England and Wales have lost almost a third of their grasslands, including wildflower-rich meadows, over the past 90 years. The second was about
Here we go again. Another blistering heatwave. Just a few days after the last one. Like many, and probably like a lot of Spectator readers, I was a moderate climate change sceptic a few years ago. The whole ‘climate emergency’ thing came across as hysterical and alarmist. There seemed to be a clear agenda to get
Bank Holidays are like buses- you wait ages for one before they all come along at once. Tomorrow will be our fourth state-mandated day off since the 18th April. It might be another golden opportunity to head to B & Q and buy bags of compost. But isn’t it all a bit much? Don’t get
If the vote in the first round goes the wrong way, cancel the second round. If the ‘wrong’ candidate is still likely to win the rescheduled election, then detain him before he can register to stand and then ban him. Then hold the election again, this time with a stronger ‘independent’ candidate who with media
On a bus journey in Transylvania last summer, I got talking to a young Romanian man who works in Yorkshire and who had been back home visiting his relatives. He told me how hard it had become for Romanians, particularly elderly people like his grandmother, to make ends meet with inflation so high. He blamed the
War has had its apologians ever since history began,From the times of the Greeks and Trojans when they sang of Arms and the Man,(But if you ask me to name the best, sir, I’ll tell you the one I mean,Head and shoulders above the rest, sir, was the War of 14-18) If you’ve never heard
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the sad death of the actor Dennis Price, star of the classic 1949 black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, regarded by many to be the greatest British film of all time. Price was only 58 when he died from cirrhosis of the liver and complications following a broken
19 min listen
This week: James Heale reads his politics column on why the Tories should fear the Greens (00:56), Lisa Haseldine outlines some of the changes to Russia’s school curriculum (06:04) and Neil Clark extols the joys of non-league football (13:02). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
Oxford City vs Rochdale at Court Place Farm doesn’t have quite the same ring as Chelsea vs Liverpool at Stamford Bridge, but last Saturday’s match was important all the same. At this level, you feel part of the match, which never happens in an executive box at the Emirates ‘The Hoops’, Oxford’s oldest football club,
Romania gets a bad rap here, associated as it often is with organised crime. In recent years around half a million Romanians have settled in the UK, making them the fourth largest group of foreign-born residents. But the irony is that as Romanians head to Britain in search of a higher standard of living, we
42 min listen
On the podcast this week: How will the war on Ukraine end? This is the question that Russia correspondent Owen Matthews asks in his cover piece for The Spectator. He is joined by Rose Gottemoeller, former deputy secretary general of Nato, to discuss whether the end is in sight (01:02). Also this week: Matthew Parris interviews
I feel strangely and disproportionately elated when Number 2 dog, Ballyblack Bess, powers home strongly to win the 20.03 race. It’s a Monday evening in January in the greyhound stadium in Blackbird Leys, Oxford. I only won £9 but I’m pleased I came because an evening at the dogs is still great old-fashioned fun. The
If you think your life is stressful it’s good to reflect on what poor René Artois went through each week in ’Allo ’Allo!, the 1980s BBC sitcom set during the German occupation of France. RAF pilots hidden in his mother-in-law’s cupboard upstairs, German officers in the café downstairs, Herr Otto Flick of the Gestapo likely
21 min listen
On this week’s episode: Katy Balls has written about what foreign policy would look like under a Liz Truss government (0:34). Rachel Johnson young boys and men can learn from the Lioness’s victory (06:50) and Neil Clark writes about Jim Corbett’s tiger hunting stories (12.34). Presented and produced by Natasha Feroze.
‘The word “Terror” is so generally and universally used in connection with everyday trivial matters that it is apt to fail to convey, when intended to do so, its real meaning.’ Thus begins the third chapter of The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (1947), part of the Man-Eater series by the great Anglo-Indian hunter and naturalist
It’s around 8.10 on a lovely warm summer’s evening on the Isle of Man and the sidecar practice session in the 2022 TT – Tourist Trophy – is about to begin. The announcer at the grandstand asks the sidecar riders to get ready to race in ten minutes. There is the sound of engines revving
Amid all the Covid-19 coverage, it’s hardly surprising that the collapse of a coach-tour operator last week didn’t make too many headlines. But the end of Shearings, the largest such operator in Europe, could mean the end of coach holidays in the UK, and if that happens, something very special will have been lost. Coach
Václav Klaus has made a habit of saying things others shy away from saying, but it doesn’t seem to have done him much harm in the popularity stakes. Quite the opposite: the 73-year-old ardently Eurosceptic free-marketeer has legitimate claims to be regarded as the most successful ‘true blue’ conservative politician in Europe over the past
The heat was still sweltering as we headed off at dusk towards the hide to watch wildlife with our enthusiastic guide, Leonie. My wife and I were on our first ever safari — or rather ‘stayfari’. No, we weren’t in deepest Africa, but in deepest Gloucestershire. And we weren’t on the look out for lions
It was late September. My wife and I were feeling overworked and overstressed — our mental states not helped by the fact that we hadn’t managed to get away for a proper summer holiday. We couldn’t face the prospect of middle-of-the-night flights or airport queues, so we looked for somewhere in the UK where we
