Lionel Shriver
Why Hachette were wrong to drop Woody Allen’s memoir
Even amid plague, economic apocalypse, and the cancellation of 2020, dumb stuff keeps happening. Besides, loads of us will now…
Cyclists have become an easy police target
Most Britons assume at the outset that any misfortune involving a cyclist is the cyclist’s fault. After all, many a…
I won’t read American Dirt – but not because the author has the wrong skin colour
Readers of The Spectator who keep up with the latest literary hissy fits could have predicted (perhaps with a groan)…
Is ‘Mini Mike’ a growing threat to Trump?
Should Bernie Sanders become the Democratic presidential nominee, expect the media to overuse these sprightly English expressions: ‘between a rock…
For cod’s sake, don’t sacrifice the fish
One of the more dispiriting experiences of the British supermarket is a visit to the fish counter. On a historically…
The persecution (and vindication) of Kevin Myers is a parable of our times
It seems seasonably suitable to celebrate good news. Unfortunately, as in most serviceable stories, for something good to happen, something…
We don’t owe Waspi women tea and biscuits
The pressure group Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) is oddly named. What their campaign opposes is pension equality. Now,…
Labour’s real 2019 manifesto
In 2019, Labour’s strategy is about delivering a fairer, more prosperous society, in adherence to our motto: for the zany,…
Dear Nigel: Don’t become the man who reversed the referendum result
Dear Nigel Believe it or not, I’ve been your defender. I’ve often told Americans, ‘Sure, he comes across as a…
Even in New York they’re going nuts over Brexit
At the New Yorker Festival party in mid-October, my astute colleague hardly needed the caution. But you know how at…
Asians are doing too well – they must be stopped
Riddle: when is discrimination against a historically disadvantaged racial minority perfectly legal? Answer: when they do too well. The first…
The world is stuck in a debt trap
I don’t usually get up early just for an appointment at a bank. Yet last Tuesday in New York, I…
Britain’s political system is broken. America’s isn’t
American liberals perceive it as a jarring inconsistency: my opposition to Trump and support for Brexit. Especially outside the UK,…
Don’t blame snowflakes – grown-ups are the idiots
San Francisco must be the virtue capital of the world. (The latest: just across the bay, Berkeley’s city council voted…
Contraception is the answer to climate change
When last week’s IPCC report warned that the human race may soon have trouble feeding itself, my reaction was: duh.…
All money is dirty – but it can still be used for good
Whitney museum: no space for profiteers of state violence // dismantle patriarchy // warren kanders must go! // supreme injustice…
The best response to hate speech is free speech
There’s a broad mainstream consensus on both sides of the Atlantic: Trump’s tweet telling four hard-left minority Congresswomen to ‘go…
The Democratic debates are proving to be the perfect advert for Trump
I have plenty of shamefaced company in having rashly predicted, as pundits are warned never to do, that Donald Trump…
When did calorie counting become offensive?
An author of spoofy, light-hearted mysteries, my friend Ruth Dudley Edwards has had unusual difficulty completing her new novel, Death…
No exaggeration: Hyperbole makes words worthless
Saturday night, a guest commentator on Sky News sputtered that Donald Trump has ‘normalised white supremacy’. Once the American President…
Adversity is the new diversity – and it disadvantages everyone
To clear up any confusion, American SATs are closer to A-levels than to British primary-school SATs. In my day, this…
Feminism has succeeded – so why don’t we call it quits?
You would think that the British Film Institute’s sponsorship of a month-long festival celebrating some of the most memorable female…
We’re all self-haters now
As an American coming of age at the fag end of the 1960s, I celebrated self-loathing. Everything about the United…
Dear Remainer parliament: you won. Now revoke Article 50 – if you dare
Dear Remainer parliament. Although we’re the voters who spurned the petition for this very course of action, we the undersigned…
Imagine the uproar if Remain had won, but MPs then made Britain leave
Sometimes it’s worth addressing what didn’t happen. For one exasperating aspect of appearing on television news is leaving the studio…
