Books
Ripeness is all
‘Blessed are the cheesemakers.’ The line from Life of Brian is followed by: ‘It’s not meant to be taken literally.…
A choice of gardening books
Garden design usually breaks out of its confines to become part of the general consciousness only in Chelsea Flower Show…
From man to beast and back again
If there’s one shared characteristic of the so-called ‘new nature writing’ it is a failure, with a few notable exceptions,…
Is this the American Houellebecq?
I Hate the Internet is not so much a novel as a wildly entertaining rant. Jarett Kobek is a self-published…
When reasoning goes wrong
It’s the intellectual bromance of the last century. Two psychologists — Danny, a Holocaust kid and adviser to the Israel…
Up Close and Personal
Chris Mitchell’s memoir of his life as a News Ltd journalist, then as editor, first of Brisbane’s Courier Mail and…
Review: Dinner with Armand de Brignac
A fine time was had by all at the Dickie Fitz Restaurant and Dining Room in London W1 the other…
Restaurateur Gavin Rankin enjoys a gastronomic trip to Belgium
Restaurateur Gavin Rankin enjoys a gastronomic trip to Belgium but wishes travelling companion, chef Rowley Leigh, had kept his mouth…
Reds in our beds?
John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley’s The Secret Cold War is the third and – at least for the time being…
Falling out with Love
Volcanic fallings out within bands are an ever-recurring motif in the history of rock music. There’s an obvious reason for…
A choice of art books
Suitably for a year so full of cataclysms and disturbing portents, 2016 is the quincentenary of the death of Hieronymus…
Pandora’s box
While I’ve read plenty of books worse than Television: A Biography, I can’t immediately think of any that were more…
Blackouts and white coats
In the cult Steve Martin film The Man With Two Brains, a doctor falls in love with a surgically removed…
A mystery, even to herself
Armed with their tiny Leicas and Nikons, most of the great postwar ‘street’ photographers liked to be unobtrusive; they wanted…
Heaven, hell and Northampton
A century ago, Sir Hubert Parry set Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ to music. The lyric had been written 100 years earlier and…
Christmas cookbooks
New books by Raymond Blanc and Pierre Koffmann retell the truth that British food came back from the brink. If…
Joking apart
A horse walks into a bar.… David Grossman takes the opening line of an old joke for his title, which…
For king and countryside
In July 1915 the poet Edward Thomas enlisted as a soldier with the Artists’ Rifles, even though, at the age…
Atlas shrugs
In his Forward Prize-winning collection of 2014, A Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, Kei Miller’s hero describes…
Skin in the game
Terry Smith is in the news again. Not for being a Brexiteer — though he’s been committed to that cause…
Mount Gay Rum
Jonathan Ray visits the oldest rum distillery in the world and gets his hands dirty blending My travels round the…
The Joy of Chocolate
In Grenada, Jonathan Ray attempts to extend his life by eating plenty of dark chocolate. I’m in the House of…
Obituary: Eric Christiansen
Over the past year, we have lost two names cherished by Spectator readers. Rodney Milnes, our opera critic for 20…
Secrets of the universe
A few years ago, in Berne, I visited the apartment where Einstein wrote his theory of special relativity, which changed…
Full steam ahead
To write, and indeed to read, a history of considerable range, both in terms of chronology and of subject matter,…
