The Week
Portrait of the week: A Covid Budget, a Cotswold meteor and Angelina Jolie sells Churchill’s painting
Home First-dose coronavirus vaccinations totalled more than 20 million. A study suggested that in the over-eighties, a single dose of…
Letters: The key to Scotland’s future
The key to the Union Sir: ‘Love-bombing’ the Scottish electorate with supplemental spending in devolved areas (‘The break-up’, 27 February)…
Cicero knew that we should study the past, not cancel it
Modern historians, excoriating the past evils of e.g. slavery and imperialism are taking the understanding of history back to its…
The Sturgeon case exposes the fatal flaw in Scottish devolution
The campaign for a Scottish parliament was rooted in the notion of a ‘democratic deficit’. Scotland kept voting Labour but…
Hollywood can’t believe Harry’s dissed Queen Oprah
Santa Monica is a soothing place to be locked down. I moved here from New York for four months in…
The creeping criminalisation of causing offence
At a time when resources are scarce, the Merseyside Constabulary must have thought long and hard about its recent advertising…
Letters: Immunity passports are nothing to fear
Nothing to fear Sir: Many of us await the day when we can travel abroad for much-anticipated holidays — but…
The Egyptians knew the value of accidental discoveries
The government has plans to fund a new research agency to back ‘cutting-edge science’. Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) I (367-282 bc), the…
George Osborne: Why I’m going into banking
Spring in Somerset — again. If someone had told me last February that I’d spend seven of the next 12…
Portrait of the week: A lockdown exit plan, Duke of Edinburgh in hospital and Texas in deep freeze
Home The much-anticipated decriminalisation of two consenting people meeting over coffee on a park bench was declared for 8 March…
Salmond, Sturgeon and why The Spectator went to court
Did Nicola Sturgeon lie to the Scottish parliament? A Holyrood committee into the now infamous Alex Salmond affair has been…
Letters: Immunity passports are nothing new
Too many bishops Sir: As a former Anglican clergyman, I have been following your articles about the current state of…
How a Roman emperor would handle Navalny
A Roman emperor would consider the tyrant Putin’s treatment of Alexei Navalny’s supporters as foolish but, looking at Russia as…
Portrait of the week: Hotel quarantine starts, Ribblehead Viaduct cracks and a royal guest for Oprah
Home The target was achieved of vaccinating, by the middle of February, about 15 million people of 70 or over,…
Vaccines are working – so why isn’t society reopening?
When the Prime Minister sets out his ‘roadmap’ for easing Covid restrictions on Monday, it will be against a backdrop…
Universal Credit and the future of the welfare state
Amid the many failures of public policy during the Covid crisis, one success has gone largely unnoticed. The Universal Credit…
Portrait of the week: A royal baby, Boohoo buyouts and France legalises lunch al desko
Home On Sunday 7 February, as the week began, 11,465,210 people in the United Kingdom had received a first vaccination…
Letters: How to repair the Church of England
Save on bishops Sir: The Church of England is once again missing the point if its financial crisis will result…
What Pliny the Elder and David Attenborough have in common
When it comes to natural history, Sir David Attenborough rules the airwaves. Pliny the Elder (d. ad 79) who, as…
Trump is being defended by Foghorn Leghorn
We weren’t long into Bruce Castor’s opening speech defending Donald Trump in his impeachment trial before we knew it was…