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The Spectator

1 October 2016 Aus

Aussie Mussies

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Malcolm (never to be released)

Malcolm Turnbull should surrender his passport and never again be allowed to leave these shores, at least while he is…

Australian Columnists

Consider This

Consider This

The WHO is a closed shop ‘I for my part am convinced that the day will come when international health…

Diary Australia

Diary of a parliamentary nobody

Upon debut as a columnist some explanatory notes are surely in order. Like the American columnist George F. Will I…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Aussie Mussies

There have been few developments to better illustrate the collective delusions of the progressive media and the Islamic community than…

Features Australia

Baiting greyhound owners

Greyhound racing is to be outlawed in NSW from July 1, purportedly based on the findings of the McHugh report,…

Features Australia

Technical nightmare

Surely Malcolm Williamson represented the ultimate process of career self-destruction possible in a culture which had never experienced suicide-bombers. When…

Features Australia

Them’s fighting words

First speeches are one of the few times Parliamentarians can present their motivations to the Chamber. After a precarious election…

Features Australia

All sizzle, no sausage

During a recent policy debate concerning the proposal to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our Constitution, a…

Features Australia

The Empire fries back

Memo to self: If I ever decide to flirt with the shoals of bankruptcy and follow friends’ calls to ‘open…

Features

Features

In search of Mayism

What does Theresa May believe? The new Prime Minister has had the summer to settle into her job and has…

Features

The May machine

Theresa May isn’t much given to shows of emotion. When Andrea Leadsom called her to concede in the Tory leadership…

Features

Doctor’s orders

Second acts in British politics are vanishingly rare these days and Liam Fox, restored to the cabinet by Theresa May,…

Features

May’s beard

This week, the Tory party conference ought to be gripped by the question, who the hell is Nick Timothy, the…

Features

Of rats and men

‘I really, really hate rats,’ Sir David Attenborough has boasted. ‘If a rat appears in a room, I have to…

Notebook

New York Notebook

The first presidential debate was a disappointment. Half an hour into the big Trump-Clinton show on Long Island, many among…

Notes on...

Croatia

Advocates of New Zealand often boast that the country is like Britain was in the 1950s. This is all well…

The Week

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week

Home Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said that Britain would oppose attempts to create an EU army, as it…

Diary

Diary

Monday night’s US presidential debate should convince a majority of American voters that Hillary Clinton is their only credible choice…

Barometer

Barometer

Lynch lore John McDonnell refused to apologise for a 2014 interview in which he called for former employment minister Esther…

Ancient and modern

Let the right ones in

As the UK prepares for Brexit into the big wide world outside, it has been pointed out that the Foreign…

From The Archives

Serpent of mud

From ‘The fall of Combles and Thiepval’, The Spectator, 30 September 1916: The trench — ugly, dirty, dull, untidy serpent…

Leading article

Deadly silence

There was a time when the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo would have featured strongly in political debate in Britain. Just…

Letters

Australian letters

Slow boats Sir: I hope Rod Liddle seeks therapy vis-a-vis that terrifying penis that haunts him (‘Haunted by an honourable…

Columnists

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

Mathias Döpfner, the extremely tall, extremely intelligent head of Axel Springer, is unusual in the generally conformist German business elite…

Rod Liddle

Let’s bring the wolves back into Britain

A year ago there was a confirmed sighting, and even film, of a wild wolf in the Netherlands for the…

Hugo Rifkind

We know who Theresa May is against. But who is she for?

One of the professional drawbacks of coming from Scotland and then moving to London is that I don’t really know…

Matthew Parris

Let the metropolitan elite lead the way

How does one join the Liberal Metro-politan Elite? What should be the qualifications? I must be an LME member because…

Martin Vander Weyer

If Deutsche Bank goes down without a bailout, I really will eat my hat

‘Can anyone seriously imagine the German state and corporate establishment allowing the bank that bears their country’s name to go…

Books

Books

Cocktails, castles and cadging

Here is a veritable feast for fans of Paddy Leigh Fermor. This is the story of a well-lived life through…

Books

The art of listening

Rachel Cusk is a writer who provokes strong reactions in her readers, and her critical reputation has swung wildly in…

Books

All work, many plays

‘Krapping away here to no little avail,’ writes Beckett to the actor Patrick Magee in September 1969. To ‘no little…

Books

Knight’s tale

In The Cousins’ War (1999), the Republican political strategist Kevin Phillips argued that three ‘civil wars’ had defined politics in…

Books

Frankly impenetrable

One day in April 1969 Theodor Adorno began teaching a new course entitled ‘An Introduction to Dialectical Thinking’. Feel free,…

Books

Recent crime fiction

There are two people in a prison cell: Frank and Hal. One of them is a member of a spy…

Books

The fallen Angel

Ashraf Marwan was an Egyptian-born businessman, a son-in-law to Nasser and a political high-flyer in the administration of Sadat, who…

Books

Untold tales of Tibet

On the night of 17 March 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama, aged 23, slipped out of the Norbulinka, his summer…

Books

Body and soul

Emma Donoghue’s novel Room was short-listed for the 2010 Man Booker prize and made into a film in 2015. Inspired…

Books

The curse of Mr Kurtz

Marie Darrieussecq shot to literary fame in France when her bestselling debut, Pig Tales (1996), was a finalist for the…

Arts

Arts

American beauty

‘At last,’ wrote Patrick Heron, a British painter, in 1956, ‘we can see for ourselves what it is to stand…

Culture Buff

Kevin Jackson as Nijinsky

In 1981, at the Sydney Theatre Company, we presented a stylish production of Chinchilla, a play by Robert David MacDonald…

Theatre

Hilarious, puzzling, boring

No Man’s Land isn’t quite as great as its classic status suggests. At first sight the script is a bit…

Music

Bach to basics

The churning, rheumatic mechanism of a harpsichord — notes needling your ears like drops of acid rain — doesn’t necessarily…

Music

Breaking up is hard to do

’Will you be dancing?’ the man in front asks his friend before the lights go down. ‘Most likely,’ she says.…

Opera

Losing heart

The subtitle for Mozart’s Così fan tutte may be ‘The School For Lovers’, but it’s as a school for directors…

Music

There’s something about Mary

Music likes to tell the same story over and over again. This is part of its tradition but even individual…

Television

Close encounters of the Eighties kind

Stranger Things is the most delightful, gripping, charming, nostalgic, compulsive, edge-of-seat entertainment I’ve had in ages. Like a lot of…

Radio

One day in November

The weather was ‘treacherous’ on Saturday, 23 November 2013, the day chosen randomly by Gary Younge as the focus for…

Cinema

White Knight

Free State of Jones is an American Civil War drama ‘inspired’ by the life of Newton Knight, who led an…

Life

Low life

Low life

I stood in front of the mirror in the £61-a-night hotel room in Paddington, buttoned my polyester dinner jacket and…

Crossword

2280: Acorns

The unclued lights are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Ignore one apostrophe. Across 1     Top for one dining…

Bridge

Bridge

TGR’s rubber bridge club is a bit like the set of your favourite soap. You have the regulars, of varying…

Spectator sport

Eddie Howe for England

The name of Jozef Venglos won’t mean much to most of us apart from a few Aston Villa completists with…

Chess puzzle

No. 428

Black to play. This position is a variation from Gelfand-Mamedyarov, Tal Memorial Blitz 2016. Black has various strong moves but…

Status anxiety

I know an anti-Tory pact won’t work

I appeared on Radio 4 with Shirley Williams recently and as we were leaving I asked her if she thought…

Food

Pens, sex and potatoes

I hoped that Bronte would be filled with Victorian writers licking ink off their fingers and bitching about Mrs Gaskell…

High life

High life

Although my birthday was in August, I chose the rather melancholy autumnal moment of September to celebrate it — mourn…

Real life

Real life

‘If you ask me,’ said the builder boyfriend, watching me hobble down the street as we set off for an…

The turf

The turf

There are few more compulsive reads in racing than the Kingsley Klarion, the in-house journal of Mark Johnston’s Middleham racing…

Chess

Rigan wizard

Mikhail Tal, the Wizard from Riga, was one of the most devastating tacticians in the history of chess. His rise…

Competition

If

In Competition No. 2967 you were invited to submit an article written by the author of your choice under the…

Crossword solution

2277: Royalty

The theme word is KING and the pairs are 4/41, 14/1A, 19/27, 34/16 and 38/24. First prize C.V. Clark, London…

Battle for Britain

The Battle for Britain

The post The Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator.

Dear Mary

Dear Mary

Q. When an invitation to shoot arrives in the autumn, I have a sense of both excitement and dread. The…

Mind your language

Ash

Home is where the heart is, but some poor languages have no word for ‘home’. For them, home is where…

Long life

Long life

Every threatened species of wildlife can count on the friendship of a member of the British royal family. There are…