The Spectator
Australia
Climate cringe
The famed ‘cultural cringe’ of the Sixties and Seventies was exacerbated by the realisation that most artistic and fashionable trends…
Australian Features
It’s the constitution, not a poem
Any form of constitutional recognition would be pointless
Pardon my perplexity, but why the excessive Pride?
There is nothing heroic about sexualising children
Government by disaster
Albanese has almost certainly misread the will of the people
Features
What really happened between Putin and Prigozhin?
What went on between Putin and Prigozhin?
The Wagner Group isn’t Russia’s only private army
The Wagner Group isn’t Russia’s only private army
The lewdness and lyricism of ancient Roman graffiti
The lewdness and lyricism of ancient Roman graffiti
The real phone-hacking scandal
The convicted phone-hacker assembling complaints against the tabloids
Is the glucose monitoring craze really so healthy?
The curious obsession with glucose monitoring gadgets
The Week
Parents have a right to know what’s in sex education classes
Rishi Sunak tends to shy away from social issues so it has been left to a backbencher, Miriam Cates, to…
Letters: In defence of teachers
Teacher trouble Sir: Rod Liddle (‘The trouble with teachers’, 24 June) is quite correct in what he says about the…
Columnists
What does reshuffle season have in store?
Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak have something in common: both men are under pressure to reshuffle their front benches and…
The myth of intersectional politics
A few years ago I mentioned the profusion of moaning women on BBC Radio 4, after a longish car journey…
The unspeakable truth about housing
Earlier this year I was a panellist for Any Questions, and a young man in the audience asked what could…
Our God complex
Pantomime is meant to be silly and perhaps superficial, but fun. One does not (for example) join an audience for…
Joe Biden is not OK
One of the most reliable standards in international comedy has long been the outstanding ineloquence of American politicians. In this…
Books
The enduring Orwell
One of the things I most enjoy about George Orwell is his love of tobacco. It was essential to him…
Solid, drab grey
Count Maxim pursues his former cleaner Alessia to Albania – but sex in badly plumbed bathrooms while senseless on raki doesn’t sound that thrilling
Circular arguments
Aristotle had long proved that the Earth was spherical, and even the illiterate masses of early medieval Europe were aware of the fact, says James Hannam
The woman who put the Spencer family on the map
Born in 1559, Alice Spencer, a formidable networker, matchmaker and patron of the arts, was the muse of poets including Edmund Spenser and John Milton
Advice to struggling writers
Broad in scope and beautifully written, this unconventional autobiography contains some of the best advice struggling writers will ever receive
The Anne Frank story continues
Hannah Pick-Goslar, a survivor of the Holocaust and Anne’s friend in Amsterdam, movingly describes their snatched conversations in Belsen before Anne disappeared forever
Web of connections
Structured around interlocking stories, the novel is a moving depiction of illness and death – but quantum physics, telepathy and time travel make for cerebral fun as well
The haunting power of 17th-century Dutch art
Too often dismissed as leaden or trivial, Dutch art is a ‘fathomless world, with a strangeness to arouse and disturb’, says Laura Cumming
What have we been missing?
Ge’s short stories set in China are her most adventurous, ranging from politics in the time of Confucius to sex in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
In seven years, Lenin changed the course of history
Between his return from exile and his death, Lenin launched – and perverted – the revolution that shapes world politics today
What ‘pax’ meant in Rome’s golden age of imperialism
The emperors of Rome’s golden age avoided civil war at all costs. But wars against other peoples were a different matter, says Peter Stothard
Arts
An icy restraint
The world has seemed like a procession of deaths lately. Generally, of those in old age. Of all of them,…
Did ChatGPT write this? Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny reviewed
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fifth and final film in the franchise so it’s Harrison Ford’s…
Why aren’t Spoon filling stadiums?
Here’s a mystery for you. Why were Spoon, one of the most dynamic, sharpest rock bands in the world, playing…
A play that explains why England’s football team are so lousy: Dear England, at the Olivier Theatre, reviewed
James Graham’s entertaining new play looks at the England manager’s job. Everyone knows that coaching the national side is just…
Policed conviviality: Serpentine Pavilion 2023 reviewed
As I sat down at this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, I overheard a curious exchange. ‘You mustn’t create art within art,’…
Time to take your meds, Kanye
No one does agonising quite like Mobeen Azhar. In several BBC documentaries now, he’s set his face to pensive, gone…
Joshua Reynolds’s revival
In front of the banner advertising the RA Summer Exhibition, the swagger statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) by Alfred…
Why the Chester Mystery Plays are more popular than ever
The Chester Mystery Plays date back to the 13th century – but are more popular now than ever, finds Richard Bratby
Life
Aussie life
Amanda Stoker’s willingness to talk about her bottom has given David Van the distinction of becoming Australia’s first real subject…
Language
I have written here in the past about the expression ‘weaponised words.’ There are many examples: ‘fascist’, ‘Nazi’ and ‘hard-right’…
What’s so super about Super Tuscans?
In Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the hopes embodied in the title dissolve into grimness and black irony. It was all…
We are experiencing an unusually high volume of bureaucracy
I have a hunch why people in late middle age are abandoning the workforce: their jobs, as they once knew…
2608: Support – solution
Reading the title as ‘backup’, unclued answers VOLTE-FACE, RETREAT, SPIN, TURN, COUNTER, BACKTRACK, WITHDRAWAL, ROTATE, RETIREMENT and RECOIL had to…
Young’s First Law of free speech
I’ve always been envious of journalists who give their names to ‘laws’, as in O’Sullivan’s First Law: ‘All organisations that…
Spectator competition winners: sonnets on sonnets
In Competition No. 3305, you were invited to submit a sonnet entitled ‘Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets’. The germ…
No. 758
White to play and win. Composed by Josef Hasek, 1929. One plausible try is 1 Kc5 but 1…f5! prepares to…
The hell of speed chess
Somewhere in hell, there is a cavernous hall filled with row upon row of people playing online speed chess. Their…
Frankie gets his last Royal Ascot hurrah – in spades
We all wanted Frankie to have a last Royal Ascot hurrah. In the end he got four, including a ninth…
Canine manners have gone to the dogs
‘Do you want me to put my dog on the lead?’ shouted the woman on her phone, as she came…
The changing face of the Eternal City
Rome To the Eternal City for the saddest of occasions, the funeral of the mother of Taki, 17, and Maria,…