The myth of Britain’s fleeing non-doms
According to popular imagination, the skies over Britain have been full these past few months of fleets of private jets…
The best film you won’t go and see this week: Widow Clicquot reviewed
August is known as ‘dump month’. It’s when the most forgettable films are released on the grounds that people don’t…
An American’s love letter to Britain
My wife and I relocated to the UK a few months ago after spending the past 37 years in the…
The cast mistake screaming for comedy: Cockfosters, at Turbine Theatre, reviewed
The Turbine Theatre is a newish venue beneath the railway arches of Grosvenor Bridge in Battersea. The comfy auditorium is…
Sourdough is the yeast of our problems
Are radical lesbians dictating what we can and cannot eat, through the offices of this very magazine? It would certainly…
The dark truth about Hollywood assistants
Anew stop has been added to the map of Movie Star Homes and Crime Scenes, on sale at LAX airport:…
Can Kamala Harris bluff her way to the White House?
Chicago ‘There are no disasters,’ said Boris Johnson, who was born in America. ‘Only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh…
The depraved world of chess cheats
Amina Abakarova, a 40-year-old chess player from Russia, supposedly tried to poison a younger rival at the Dagestan Chess Championship…
Farage’s next move in his plan to destroy the Tories
On Tuesday afternoon, a familiar figure pulled up at a Westminster café to plot the Tories’ downfall. Nigel Farage beamed…
Who will stand up for France’s aristocrats?
When it was recently announced that 40,000 people, the great majority civilians, have been killed in the Gaza conflict, I…
Trump misses Biden
Chicago Everyone in the Democrats’ Convention centre – a bleakly corporate sports stadium on the edge of Chicago – is…
Portrait of the week: prisoners are freed, Ted Baker closes and train drivers announce strikes
Home Emergency measures, known as Operation Early Dawn, were brought in to ease prison overcrowding. Defendants would be summoned to…
Labour’s union problem
Less than two months in, one aspect of Keir Starmer’s government is becoming clear. This administration is closer to the…
Too bombastic to be country music: Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion reviewed
Grade: B Country music has become the acceptable route through which American pop stars resuscitate their floundering careers: sales are…
Why are these dead-eyed K-pop groups represented as some kind of ideal?
On Saturday, Made in Korea: The K-pop Experience began by hailing K-pop as ‘the multi-billion-pound music that’s taken the world…
A connoisseur’s guide to collecting matchboxes
We’d been told it would be a ‘brat’ summer, characterised by its inventor, the singer Charli XCX, as ‘a pack…
Can you spot an ‘extreme misogynist’?
Can you tell the difference between an extreme misogynist and a moderate misogynist? Hating women has always seemed, to me…
Why can no one find the eye hospital?
‘Where’s the eye hospital?’ shouted pretty much everyone standing outside a building signposted eye hospital in Irish. ‘An tAonad Oftailmeolaiochta’…
My Egyptian mau pyramid scheme
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna Was it chance or destiny, I wonder, that caused the eldest of our six children, Caterina, to…
American salads are weird – but an egg salad is perfect
The Americans are weird about salad. I’m sorry, but somebody had to say it. Really, their use of the word…
Spectator Competition: August society
In Competition 3363 you were invited to write a poem about holidaymakers from a local’s perspective. Thanks to Paul Freeman…
Triumphant: Big Thief, at Green Man, reviewed
One of the first things I learned after seeing Big Thief triumph at Green Man is that some long-time fans…
Hans Niemann against the World
For the irrepressible Hans Niemann, August is no time to chill. The 21-year-old American grandmaster began the month by defeating his…
