Books
Prize wide open
Betraying the Nobel opens with a detonation from Michael Nobel, Alfred’s great-grandnephew. The vice-chairman and then chairman of the Nobel…
The fog of unknowing
It’s 1981 in Richmond, south-west London. Detective Inspector Henry Hobbes is called out to a rundown house where the octogenarian…
George Pell: behind bars
This is the prison diary that should never have been written because Cardinal George Pell should never have been in…
Summer books
Bad year, good books
Soft-centred satire
There was an acidic bravura and beauty in P.J. O’Rourke’s early journalism and a gleefulness in the ease with which…
Spot the literary character
For answers, visit spectator.com.au/2020/12/answers-to-spot-the-literary-character. Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
A broad church under threat
The future of conservatism depends crucially on its ability to withstand the new hard right, says William Hague
His own best creation
Cary Grant was a hoax so sublime his creator struggled to escape him. He was a metaphor, too, for the…
End-of-Times panic
Two things it may be wise to know before picking up this relatively short and surprisingly cheerful brand spanking NEW…
The making of a composer
‘My dear young man: don’t take it too hard,’ Joseph II counsels a puppyish Mozart, the colour of his hair…
Avenging Amiel
If this book becomes a Netflix blockbuster, as it surely must, Barbara Amiel presents us with an opening image. She…
Girls behaving badly
Saying you don’t like Bananarama is like saying you don’t like summer or Marilyn Monroe — a sure sign of…
You, the protagonist
When the estimable Andy Miller, the host of the Backlisted podcast, recommended a new collection of short stories on Twitter,…
A Titan of science
This book, soaked like the Dutch Republic itself ‘in ink and paint’, is enchanting to the point of escapism. The…
The glories of geography
’Tis the season of complacency, when we sit in warmth and shiver vicariously with Mary and Joseph out in the…
The triumph of independent thought
History used to be so much easier. There were the Wars of the Roses, then the Reformation, the Civil War,…
When all else fails…
This is an Exquisite Corpse of a novel — or if you prefer another name for that particular game, Heads,…
A bloodletting for the soul
Ever since my early youth I have loved, followed and respected a certain music genre that some people consider strange,…
Office boy
For most of us, going to work means going to an office, to sit at a desk and perform bureaucratic…
Slaves to hunger
‘It was a gray mass of people in rags, lying motionless with bloodless, pale faces, cropped hair, with a shifty,…
The science of scent
Harold McGee’s Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells is an ambitious and enormous work. Indeed it’s so…
Poacher turned gamekeeper
A common but flawed assumption about Joseph Ratzinger is that he is simply an ardent conservative. That’s the figure we…
Memoirs without memory
James Kelman doubtless remains best known for his 1994 Booker prize win for How Late It Was, How Late and…
Graphic reportage
One of the running jokes about ‘serious’ graphic novels is that so many seem to consist, one way and another,…
Transport of joy
If 2020 has given us something to talk about other than Covid, it’s been history — and, more precisely, to…
