The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

The price of seeing Santa (and what it gets you)

Dear Santas A £22.50 a head Christmas theme park in Warwickshire designed by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen closed temporarily for improvements after visitors complained of mud, a skinny, swearing Father Christmas and elves who stood around smoking. What do you get when you take your children to see Santa? Prices for family of four: — £20 Santa

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Playing chicken with Vladimir Putin

An official end to the Cold War was declared at a summit between President George H. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev on a Soviet cruise ship moored at Malta on 2 December 1989. It is only a matter of time before western governments will have to admit that it has recommenced. While the rhetoric against Islamic

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Portrait of the week | 27 November 2014

Home Theresa May, the Home Secretary, spent a few days announcing things. She broadcast on the Andrew Marr Show on television and then on Desert Island Discs. She said Britain was ‘unlikely’ to meet a target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands, because EU migration had ‘blown us off course’. Regarding child

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The Spectator at war: Preachers of sedition

From The Spectator, 28 November 1914: If the press is to be muzzled, why do not the muzzling laws hold good in Ireland? It is against all common-sense to place Ireland in a privileged position — to give roving licences to any Irishmen who care to kill recruiting. Men have been arrested in England for

The Spectator

From the archives | 27 November 2014

From ‘Sedition in Ireland’, The Spectator, 28 November 1914: If the press is to be muzzled, why do not the muzzling laws hold good in Ireland? It is against all common-sense to place Ireland in a privileged position — to give roving licences to any Irishmen who care to kill recruiting. Men have been arrested

Wednesday

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The Spectator at war: Digging for victory

From The Spectator, 28 November 1914: After discipline and rifle shooting comes entrenching. We suggest, as a practical proposal, that every corps should practise its men at least once a week in trench digging. There ought to be no difficulty even in towns in inducing some patriotic man to lend them a piece of ground

Monday

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The Spectator at war: In the event of invasion…

From The Spectator, 28 November 1914: In the Commons on Monday Mr. Wedgwood, who has served with the Naval Division in Belgium, asked for instructions as to what civilians were to do in the event of invasion. Were they to hand over their weapons to an appointed authority, or keep them and use them? The

Sunday

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The Spectator at war: Topsy-turvy

From The Spectator, 21 November 1914: Both at home and abroad this war has already caused us to wonder whether we wake or dream, so different in many respects are the events from the anticipations. To begin with, there is a matter in which the Spectator has a particular reason for being sensible of the

Saturday

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The Spectator at war: German lessons

From The Spectator, 21 November 1914: No English writer knows more of German ways than Mr. Dawson, and his large book upon public administration in towns is a mass of information. It is his misfortune to have produced it at a moment when Englishmen are not likely to be eagerly receptive of the German methods

Friday

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The Spectator at war: Dispatches from the front

From The Spectator, 21 November 1914: The papers of Tuesday and Wednesday contained two exceptionally interesting despatches from an eyewitness at Sir John French’s headquarters. These descriptive narratives have improved remarkably in value since the beginning of the war—a fact which does not seem to be in the least appreciated by some newspapers. The despatch

Thursday