Noel Malcolm

The lady vanishes

41 min listen

On this week’s podcast:  After the markets saw off Kwarteng, Trussonomics and now Truss herself, James Forsyth writes in The Spectator that the markets will be driving British politics for the foreseeable future. He is joined by Britain economics editor at the Economist Soumaya Keynes to discuss the institutions now dictating government policy (00:56). Also this week: Looking ahead

Will The Parthenon Project seize the Elgin Marbles?

Thirty-five years ago, the late Christopher Hitchens published a book about the Elgin Marbles. Unsurprisingly, it was a polemical work; he was passionately campaigning for the return of the sculptures to Athens. But that was not the reason why I wrote a scathing review of it for The Spectator. Parts of it were plagiarised, as

The power trap

Soon after the date for the EU referendum was set, Timothy Garton Ash published a piece in this magazine under the title ‘A conservative case for staying in’. He was followed by Ian Buruma, attacking the idea that, having left the EU, the British would be more free. And then, after the Obama visit to

Taste and passion — with a dash of luck

Available from Heywood Hill, 10 Curzon Street, London W1J 5HH Producers of ‘period dramas’, on film or television, go to tremendous trouble to create the right ‘period look’. In the late Victorian town house, everything is late Victorian; in the Regency rectory, everything is Regency; and so on. All of which is, of course, absurd