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The Spectator
Thursday
Passages
‘There are a lot of long passages.’
Cats 3
‘Some of us are, quite literally, fat cats.’
Iraq
Sacrifice
‘If you only knew what sacrifices your father is having to make to put you through university.’
Bedtime 2
‘Are you going to be much longer, Daddy? I’m trying to get to sleep.’
Spectator letters: India’s forgotten soldiers, James Delingpole’s happy father, and a defence of public relations
Worth the candle Sir: I was saddened by Charles Moore’s account of the Westminster Abbey candlelit vigil marking the centenary of the start of the first world war (The Spectator’s Notes’, 9 August). At each of the four quarters of the Abbey (representing the four corners of the British Empire), he notes, there was one
Who cleans skyscrapers?
Tough at the top The clocks on Big Ben were cleaned by abseiling window-cleaners. Some other big cleaning/painting jobs: — Repainting the Forth Railway Bridge used to be a metaphor for never-ending work, but a new coating completed in 2012 is estimated to have a life of 25 years. — Sydney Harbour Bridge was, for
Portrait of the week | 21 August 2014
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, writing of the Islamic State in northern Iraq, said: ‘If we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain.’ Anyone waving an Islamic State flag in Britain would be arrested,
Asylum seekers are dying in British ports. It’s time we looked after them properly.
The tale is now familiar: shouts are heard from inside a freight container and police are called. A cargo of human beings is discovered, some gravely ill. This happened last Sunday along the Thames at Tilbury docks. Thirty-five Afghans were discovered. One of them, Meet Kapoor, was already dead. Days later, 15 Kashmiris and Eritreans
Books and arts – 21 August 2014
Podcast: Britain’s jihad, the Pope vs the Vatican, and the existence of ‘The One’
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_21_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Britain’s jihad, the Pope vs the Vatican, and the existence of ‘The One'” fullwidth=”yes”] The View from 22 podcast [/audioplayer]The murder of James Foley by an Isis fighter ‘with a London accent’ has been treated with understandable revulsion. But we shouldn’t be surprised, says Douglas Murray in his cover piece this week. On
The Spectator at war: The death of Pope Pius X
From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: Pope Pius X. died at twenty minutes past one on Thursday morning. In a moment of lucidity, just before his death, his Holiness is reported to have said: “Now I begin to think the end is approaching. The Almighty in His in- exhaustible goodness wishes to spare me the
The death of Pope Pius X
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 22 August 1914: Pope Pius X died at 20 minutes past one on Thursday morning. In a moment of lucidity, just before his death, his Holiness is reported to have said: ‘Now I begin to think the end is approaching. The Almighty in His inexhaustible goodness wishes to spare
Wednesday
The Spectator at war: Commercial possibilities
From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: IT is gratifying to find that the public is rapidly waking up to the fact that other prospects than those of universal unemployment arise out of the present war. The daily papers of this week, instead of talking of the necessity for relief funds, have begun to talk of
Tuesday
The Spectator at war: How to keep husbands sweet
From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: SIR,—The article on this subject in your last issue has prompted me to write down some of the things said to me about the war by the women in my district. Our rector wished me to ask at each house whether any one from it was serving with the
Monday
Video: Does Cameron have an Iraq policy? Or is he just making it up?
The Prime Minister has returned from his holidays, and yesterday wrote an intriguing piece in the Sunday Telegraph about the ongoing struggles in Iraq and Syria. ‘True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world’ he wrote, and
The Spectator at war: Lord Kitchener’s campaign
The Spectator, 22 August 1914: Recruiting for Lord Kitchener’s first hundred thousand men appears to have brought in seventy thousand. That is good, though, we confess, not so rapid as we should like to see it. This comparative slowness is, no doubt, very largely ‘due to the fact that even now there are not enough
Sunday
The Spectator at war: Talk of the village
‘War and the village wives’, from The Spectator, 15 August 1914: The men and women of the village are talking unceasingly about the war. The whole aspect of the place is changed. The English silence is broken. Even on Sunday no one lolls and smokes in speechless reflection. All the men read the newspapers; none
