The Spectator
Australia
It ain’t over ‘til it’s over
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have declared themselves the winners of the US presidential election; news which should fill many…
Australian Features
The Marquess of Queens, buried not yet
Why should Trump throw in the towel? The blue corner didn’t
Business/Robbery etc.
Treasury plans to fill the RBA’s interest rate vacuum Is it cause for alarm, or an inevitable trend, that the…
Laughs on the way to the guillotine
The ABC is yet again mired in confusion and misinformation
A very wicked outcome in the land of Oz
The Tin Man locks down the yellow brick road
Features
The rise and fall of mink
Mink keeps you warm. That’s a most acceptable bonus, but its prime function is status. This week, however, the focus…
The West has left Armenia to fend for itself
Armenians don’t want a deal – they want resolution
Wishful drinking: pubs have always been good at bending the rules
Pubs have always been good at bending the rules
Trump may have lost, but his agenda is here to stay
He may have lost – but his agenda is here to stay
The questions we must ask about the Covid vaccine
The Covid vaccine still has a long way to go
Macron is preparing for intellectual battle against Islamism
Muslim thinkers offer a remedy to fundamentalism
Macron alone: where are France’s allies in the fight against Islamism?
Where is the support for his fight against Islamism?
Could ten million Covid tests a day get Britain back to normal?
Britain’s best hope isn’t a vaccine – it’s millions of daily tests
The Week
Letters: Why lockdown II was necessary
Cancelled procedures Sir: Your leader (‘A lockdown too far’, 7 November) suggests that the Prime Minister should have shown ‘leadership’…
Rome’s collegiate system was more logical than America's
So Humpty Trumpty has had his great fall. But how democratic or logical was his election in the first place…
Open and shut case: how did lockdown affect shops?
Shot in the arm Global stock markets reached a new high after pharmaceutical firm Pfizer announced a vaccine it is…
Boris won't be forgiven if he caves on Brexit now
It now looks increasingly likely that lockdown will end on 2 December, after all. The decision to impose further restrictions…
My post-election drink with Nigel Farage
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a useful stop for journalists looking for some rust-belt Americana not too far from New York. The…
Portrait of the week: Vaccine hopes up, Zoom shares down and Biden calls Boris
Home Pfizer and BioNTech announced a vaccine against Covid-19 of 90 per cent efficacy from two injections three weeks apart.…
Columnists
China’s rockstar-of-tech has fallen foul of Xi
FTSE indices soared as the Biden Bounce met vaccine euphoria, underpinned by the Bank of England’s announcement of another £150…
What the three types of Trump supporter really want
As Democrats’ colossal collective sigh of relief drives wind turbines even over in Britain, let’s not lose sight of the…
The strangeness of voting in the Lords from my bed
Having only recently entered the House of Lords, I must tread with caution, but I had always understood that it…
Voters have lost their nerve
Elections teach us nothing. Instead, each tribe dredges succour from the minutiae, proving that they had been right all along.…
Will the vaccine revive Boris?
The first full week of the new national lockdown had the potential to be very difficult for Boris Johnson. Although…
It’s shameful how we have locked down our elderly
There’s a lot I don’t know about care home visits during this pandemic. I don’t know how straightforward it would…
Books
Things mankind was not supposed to know — the dark side of science
One day someone is going to have to write the definitive study of Wikipedia’s influence on letters. What, after all,…
The autistic mind could hold the key to the future
An old, cynical adage holds that ‘if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. I remembered…
Masculinity in crisis: Men and Apparitions, by Lynne Tillman, reviewed
Masculinity, we are often told, is in crisis. The narrator of Men and Apparitions, Professor Ezekiel (Zeke) Stark, both studies…
Humiliating the IRA was a fatal mistake
It was said that Reginald Maudling, as home secretary, once boarded a plane in Belfast and immediately requested a stiff…
Driven to distraction — the unhappy life of Vivien Eliot
Do you think your mother slept with T.S. Eliot? That was the question I needed to ask the 98-year-old in…
Gardening books for Christmas — reviewed by Ursula Buchan
Dan Pearson is one of the finest of all British garden designers, blessed with sensitivity, a wonderful eye, deep plant…
Universities are supposed to encourage debate, not strangle it
Liberal values are under attack on two flanks. Those of us who think extensive freedom of expression, universal human rights…
The courage of a madman: Maurice Wilson’s doomed assault on Everest
Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb all 14 of the planet’s peaks higher than 8,000 metres, is probably the…
From light into darkness: the genius of Goya
The great Spanish artist Francisco Goya was born in Zaragoza in 1746, the son of a gilder whose livelihood was…
Books of the Year II — chosen by our regular reviewers
David Crane If nothing else, this has been a good time for catch-up. Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest (translated by Walter…
Arts
The Undoing
It’s a strange prospect for strange times, the young violinist Freya Franzen on the stage of Melbourne’s Concert Hall playing…
Arthur Streeton Land of the Golden Fleece 1926
In February 1922, Princess Mary, the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, was married in the first…
In defence of the tyrannical male maestro
Praising the grand old maestri of the podium isn’t a good look, as they say on Twitter. Conductors such as…
The journalists who scripted the golden age of Hollywood
Tanya Gold on the journalists who scripted the golden age of Hollywood
Racists will love it: National Theatre's Death of England – Delroy reviewed
Death of England: Delroy is a companion piece to Death of England, which ran in February at the NT and…
I miss the faint hiss of a spinning foot: Royal Ballet – Live reviewed
Ballet lovers driven square-eyed by a drip feed of livestreaming and archive footage have been pining for the patter of…
I’ve heard worse things — the death rattle of a close relative, for example: Kylie’s Disco reviewed
Grade: B– Uh-oh. Might have to be careful here, pull my punches a little bit. The editor is a big…
Boldly going where hundreds have gone before: Brave New Planet podcast reviewed
Since technology is developing at such light-speed pace, why does it feel so strangely slow? There is a sense that…
Did any of this actually happen? The Crown, season four, reviewed
‘We have to stop it now!’ says Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter), smoking another cigarette, obviously. She’s talking about the…
A gripping portrait: Billie reviewed
This documentary about Billie Holiday is transfixing. Not just because it’s about Billie Holiday — I am not into jazz…
Life
Aussie Life & Language
Simon Collins A British newspaper once ran a TV ad extolling the virtues of journalistic objectivity. ‘Point of view’, which…
Spectator competition winners: poems for a qwerty keyboard
In Competition No. 3174 you were invited to write a poem in which each line begins with the letters A…
Drinking to the glories of Burns and follies of Boris
At least in London, midwinter spring has not been entirely vanquished, and the trees are still a couple of strong…
Where’s the slogan saying ‘Lose Weight. Stop Boozing. Survive the virus!’?
Panic at the country feed store. Panic in the horse and pony aisle. I wonder to myself: could life ever…
I was the only Trump supporter among the olive-pickers
We bums find ourselves sought after at this time of year to lend a hand with the olive harvest. So…
2480: Warning - solution
Ten symmetrically placed unclued lights are synonyms for the warning ‘WATCH OUT’. First prize Andy Wallace, Ash Green, CoventryRunners-upCaroline Arms,…
The cultural elite has a new enemy
New York Election night parties are usually dreadful affairs, with the idiot box blaring and hysterical listeners screaming out the…
Our Twelve to Follow have generated a record-breaking profit
First the company report. Readers who invested a tenner on the nose each time our Twelve to Follow for the…
The ludicrousness of stemmed wine glasses
In 1989 I answered my first mobile phone call on Oxford Street using a brick-sized Motorola borrowed from work. Several…
Bridge | 14 November 2020
It’s been a busy week of bridge. First came the Lady Milne, the women’s home internationals. As the host nation,…
What’s the difference between ‘gifting’ and ‘giving’?
Boris Johnson, the Telegraphsuggested last week, is understood to have a personal interest in rewilding, ‘recently gifting his father beavers…
No. 630
White to play. Mista–Kloza, Poland 1955 (supposedly). Which move does White play to force a quick checkmate? Answers should be…
Dear Mary: How do I cope with cooking for food snobs?
Q. I have a delightful young goddaughter who, thanks to the virus, I have not seen since last year. Her…
Will my kids report me for hate speech?
When Humza Yousaf, the SNP’s cabinet secretary for justice, announced that his new Hate Crime Bill would remove the ‘dwelling…
2483: In my soup
Unclued lights are defined by extra words in ten clues and are anagrams of ten of a kind. Elsewhere, ignore…