The Week
Sebastian Faulks’s diary: My task for 2015 – get a job
Just back from Sri Lanka, a place I first went to in 1981. It was then a dreamy island. I…
What Samsung’s new TVs owe to Jeremy Bentham
Watching brief Samsung warned users of its voice-activated televisions that what they said in front of the TV could be…
What Cicero knew that David Davis doesn't
The MP David Davis has lamented that the British seem to prefer laws that protect their security rather than guard…
From the archives
From ‘Prohibition in Scotland during the War’, The Spectator, 13 February 1915: At present the economic waste caused by drunkenness…
Australian letters
Royal slip Sir: Philip Murphy’s ‘Sir’ Bob Carr of Italy article (Spectator Australia, 7 February) refers, in relation to Prince…
Proof that the schools revolution isn’t over
For those who assumed that the removal of Michael Gove as Education Secretary marked the end of the Conservatives’ scholastic…
Portrait of the week
Home MPs voted by 382 to 128 to make Britain the only country to allow genetic modification of embryos to…
Alexander Chancellor’s diary: Picking golden oldies, Ken Dodd, and the sadness of Jack Nicholson
An excellent test of character is a person’s response to being offered an Oldie of the Year Award. There have…
Would Jesse Boot have agreed with Stefano Pessina? (Clue: he called his employees ‘comrade’)
Right Boot, left Boot What would Jesse Boot, who built Britain’s largest chemist chain from his father’s herbal shops, made…
The Magna Carta was hopelessly behind the times
Important as the Magna Carta (ad 1215) has been as a founding myth for everything we hold dear about law…
From the archives
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 6 February 1915: Germany proclaims a paper blockade of all the British coast,…
Spectator letters: Oxfam’s Ebola appeal; what Cumberbatch should have said; and why Prince Charles is right and wrong
In defence of Oxfam Sir: Mary Wakefield rightly praises Médecins sans Frontières but makes many misinformed claims about Oxfam and…
Calling the Green party socialist is an insult to socialists
The Green party has been likened to a watermelon: green on the outside and red on the inside. But that…
Portrait of the week
Home Party leaders mercilessly launched 100 days of campaigning before the general election on 7 May. David Cameron, the Conservative…
Nigel Farage’s diary: How I survived Dry January
Dry January is tougher than it sounds. Well, for me anyway. It’s now been some 28 days since I’ve had…
Female bishops are very, very old news
Female bishops The Reverend Libby Lane was ordained as Bishop of Stockport, the Church of England’s first female bishop. —…
Syriza could have learned from Aristophanes. Instead it's headed for Greek tragedy
The German chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed her desire for Greece to remain part of the European ‘story’. Since Greeks…
From the archives
From ‘Reprisals’, The Spectator, 30 January 1915: There has been a tendency among some newspapers, and perhaps still more among…
Letters
Non pas Charlie Sir: Like many people I too was shocked and horrified at the attack on the staff of…
Don't believe the gloom-mongers: deflation will be good for Britain
Campaigning in Putney in 1978, Mrs Thatcher famously took out a pair of scissors and cut a pound note down…
Portrait of the week
Home More than 1,100 imams and Islamic leaders received a letter from Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, and Lord Ahmad…
Tom Holland’s diary: Fighting jihadism with Mohammed, and bowling the Crown Prince of Udaipur
As weather bombs brew in the north Atlantic, I’m roughing it by heading off to Rajasthan, and the literary festival…
The surprising truth about global inequality
Poor data Oxfam complained of an ‘inequality explosion’, citing an estimate that by next year 1 per cent of the…
Socrates, Aristophanes and Charlie Hebdo
What would the ancients have made of Charlie Hebdo? The First Amendment tolerates the expression of opinions, however offensive, but…
From the archives
From ‘Economic quackery’, The Spectator, 23 January 1915: Ever since the war began there has been a tendency to rely upon…
