Books
Kaiser Wilhelm's guide to ruining a country
The life of Kaiser Wilhelm II is also a guide to how to ruin a country, says Philip Mansel
The robber baron who 'bought judges as other men buy food’
The robber barons of the gilded age, at the turn of the 20th century, were the most ruthless accumulators of…
The mad, bad and sad life of Dusty Springfield
Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big…
Like Birdsong – only cheerful
It is difficult to know whether Clive Aslet intended a comparison between his debut novel, The Birdcage, set in Salonica…
The threat from Russia’s spies has only increased since the fall of Communism
‘No, we must go our own way,’ said Lenin. The whole world knows him as Vladimir, while he was in…
Potato prints, paintings and the Soviet Union: the real Miss Jean Brodie
During the second world war, when not only food, but paper and artists’ materials were scarce, Peggy Angus made a…
Creepy, dizzying and dark: a choice of recent crime fiction
Philip Kerr is best known for his excellent Bernie Gunther series about a detective trying to survive with his integrity…
Banned – and booming: the strange world of Chinese golf
I was in Shanghai interviewing a Chinese film director and an actor. We were discussing government censorship. How did anyone…
Title Stories: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
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Murakami drops magic for realism in this tale of a lonely Tokyo engineer
When Haruki Murakami — Japan’s most successful novelist at home and abroad — was interviewed by the Paris Review in…
Rosa Wedding Day
More than a thousand buds have arrived in the garden. Yesterday I looked and there were none. Tangled into a…
Books and arts
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Muslim integration
Growing up is hard enough at any time; coping with additional cross-currents of race and religion is a whole new…
Rosa Wedding Day
More than a thousand buds have arrived in the garden. Yesterday I looked and there were none. Tangled into a…
Title Stories: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The post Title Stories: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join…
Rosa Wedding Day
More than a thousand buds have arrived in the garden. Yesterday I looked and there were none. Tangled into a…
Title Stories: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
The age of the starving artist
Philip Hensher on the precarious fortunes of even the most gifted 19th-century artists
John Wayne, accidental cowboy
I’m not making a picture [The Green Berets] about Vietnam, I’m making a picture about good against bad. I happen…
Tip-toeing through Sri Lanka
‘The first night I stayed in Kilinochchi, I was a little apprehensive,’ admits the usually cool-headed Vasantha, van-driver and narrator…
Title Stories: The Divine Comedy by Dante Aligheri
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Daring? No. Well written? Yes
This has all the appearance of a book invented by a publisher. Two years ago W. Sydney Robinson published an…
The British countryside in prints and paper-cuts
The Yale Center for British Art holds the largest collection of British art outside the UK. An impressive collection it…
Lenin, Hitler, Sloane Square – a Polish noble's 20th-century Odyssey
If Vincent Poklewski Koziell has really drunk as much as he claims in this book I doubt he would be…
Main villain: the aftermath of war
Most crime novels offer a curious kind of escape, to places that jag the nerves and worry the mind. Their…
