The Spectator

Podcast: Fox hunting, the Budget and Harper Lee

The hunting ban could be gone soon – but the hypocrisy will linger on, says Melissa Kite in this week’s issue. Cameron knows he has to deliver something to the hunting fraternity now that he leads a majority government, because he promised a vote on repeal in his manifesto. The trouble is that he can’t

The Spectator at war: The eschatology of Austria-Hungary

From ‘The Crumbling of Austria-Hungary‘, The Spectator, 10 July 1915: SUPERFICIALLY Austria-Hungary may seem to have “come again.” Compared with the position a few months ago, when the Russians were bursting through the Carpathians, when Przemysl had just fallen, and when the major portion of Hungary was seething with distrust and discontent, the Empire of

Heroism at Gallipoli

From ‘Sir Ian Hamilton’s dispatch’, The Spectator, 3 July 1915: The Dardanelles affair is a war in itself — much more exacting and complicated than many wars in the past which have made the names of British generals and regiments immortal. If the policy which has governed this war is not creditable to our foresight and

Summer Budget 2015: Full text of George Osborne’s speech

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/summerbudget2015/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the Summer Budget”] Listen [/audioplayer] Mr Deputy Speaker, This is a Budget that puts security first. It’s a Budget that recognises the hard work and sacrifice of the British people over the past 5 years and says: we will not put that at risk, we have a

The Spectator at war: A war within a war

From ‘Sir Ian Hamilton’s Despatch’, The Spectator, 10 July 1915: THE despatch from Sir Ian Hamilton which was published in the papers of Wednesday leaves the reader in no doubt that the Dardanelles campaign is one of the most difficult operations of war ever undertaken by an army. We have tried, and are still trying,

The Spectator at war: Mass movement

From ‘The Impulse of the Phalanx’, The Spectator, 10 July 1915: A mass of men, large enough to be beyond the control of any immediate words of command, is a difficult thing to stop when once it has been set in motion. It acquires a momentum of its own. The wills of individuals become submerged in

The Spectator at war: Light boats

From ‘News of the Week‘, The Spectator, 10 July 1915: IN the western theatre of the war there has been a great deal of talk about renewed German activity on a huge scale, of imperative orders by the Kaiser to take Calais without delay, of vast movements of troops, and of huge guns intended when

The Spectator at war: A breath of fresh air

From ‘The Open-Air Hospital at Cambridge’, The Spectator, 3 July 1915: We are all familiar with the open-air treatment of various diseases, and particularly of tuberculosis, but no such startling lesson on the value of open air for wounds, and one may say for practically all diseases, has been given to us before. Even diseases

The Spectator at war: Russian retreat

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 3 July 1915: During the week the Russians have been falling back in Poland and Galicia, and the Germans have been thrusting forward. The papers speak, indeed, of two million Germans invading Russia under Marshal von Mackensen. The Russian retreat, however, whether to the east or to the

The Spectator at war: A struggle in Bohemia

From ‘John Hus’, The Spectator, 3 July 1915: Here and there we have indications that this titanic struggle has not led the Czechs to renounce their hatred of all that is German. The misfortune of Bohemia has ever been her geographical position. As an outpost of the Slav races only the mountain ranges with which