Features
Piers Morgan, I’m coming for you
I’m keen on a Plan B. My father, Norman the Knicker King, reared us in trembling terror of ending up…
Revenge of the Blob: good teachers are under siege
Jolyon Maugham has a point. There is a need for an inquiry in the aftermath of Jason Arday’s tragic death.…
The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill only serves the IRA
More British military personnel were killed during the Troubles than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. As well as soldiers, innocent…
How Ireland succumbed to ‘radical chic’
When a law student from Co. Kildare was stopped this summer on suspicion of transporting a bomb across the Irish…
Jenny Gilruth was my teacher – the bullying claims don’t surprise me
When I heard that a civil service insider had made bullying allegations against Scotland’s deputy first minister, Jenny Gilruth, I…
I’m a grockle and proud
‘How long have they been here?’ ‘Three generations.’ ‘Ah, just grockles, then.’ Exchanges such as this must have taken place…
Tolkien knew the truth about power
One route into the thorny question of J.R.R. Tolkien’s politics comes courtesy of Giorgia Meloni. Scarcely a profile of the…
‘We pretend to teach, they pretend to learn’: the reality of lecturing Chinese students
Shanghaiing, the practice of drugging and kidnapping men on the US West Coast for service on ships bound for China,…
Cut the price of stamps to save the Christmas card
Readers with a nervous disposition should turn the page because I’m going to be sprinkling the C-word across the next…
How Prague cured me of my communism
Proust can keep his soggy madeleine. For me the word ‘Prague’ is a trigger of memory like no other. It…
Picking mulberries is my rebellion against modernity
Behind the ticket booth at Levens Hall, Cumbria, is an old black mulberry tree (Morus nigra) that vastly improves the…
I watched Chris Packham’s climate crisis film so you don’t have to
The podium is out, what looks like a government logo fixed in the corner: we are watching the People’s Emergency…
There’s still time to save the West
When The Spectator asked me whether I would write an essay on ‘Why we need to strengthen the West’, I was delighted…
Revealed: the feuding at the heart of Reform
If Tolstoy had written about British politics, he might have noted: ‘Happy parties are all alike; every unhappy party is…
Enjoy Anglican priests while you still can
Something amazing happened as I was walking my 91-year-old mother through Ledbury: we saw a bobby on the beat. He…
Why won’t the UK curtail the Muslim Brotherhood?
What should the British government do about the Muslim Brotherhood? This question has confounded policy-makers for decades and was brought…
Are Ukraine’s deep strikes simply strengthening Putin’s hand?
Are Ukraine’s deep strikes against Russia helping Kyiv win the war or strengthening the hand of Kremlin hardliners? Since early…
Death to the dinner party!
It’s time to put the dinner party out of its misery. Oh, and the awards dinner, dining with the cruise…
The great whataboutery delusion
If you live near the frontiers of acceptable opinion, as any thinking person must surely do, you quickly find that…
Don’t grow a beard
I was looking at a photo of my great-grandfather the other day and admiring his beard. A magnificent spade-shaped affair,…
There’s a logic to Donald Trump’s incendiary diplomacy
On his very first day as Colombia’s new President, Abelardo de la Espriella received a dramatic house-warming gift: a billion…
Class clowns: the triumph of inanity over academia
Daniel Defoe observed that plague victims ‘never perceiv’d that they were infected’ until they discovered the ‘tokens’ on their skin.…
Why Nigel Farage’s ‘Australia-style’ border policy is doomed to fail
When I served as Australia’s High Commissioner in London, I was naturally flattered by how often British politicians and officials…
Who decides if a word is racist?
I swear Rod Liddle was smiling down on me last week, as I found myself tussling with an editor. I’d…
When does killing the enemy become murder?
When is extrajudicial killing just war by other means, and when does it become a state-sponsored act of terror? ‘We…
