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The Spectator

28 October 2023 Aus

Darwin Award

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Darwin Award

Self-annihilation through sheer stupidity is what qualifies an individual to be honoured at the annual satirical Darwin Awards. Started as…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Too frail to fail?

Better to have Voiced than to have never Voiced at all

Features Australia

Towards Eurabia

Europe’s shameful capitulation to Islamist anti-Semitism

Features Australia

A week of mourning

Or a week of thinking up excuses

Features Australia

Business/Robbery, etc

Axis of Woke a disconcerting media winner in the Voice debacle

Features Australia

Global bond yields soar

Crunch time looms for the indebted

Features Australia

There is no Disneyland Dreamtime

Aboriginal assimilation and its malcontents

Features Australia

My Aleşehir mate

Climbing up donkey tracks

Features

Features

Identity Crisis: why doesn’t the West know who to back in the Israel-Hamas war?

When two planes flew into the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, the world stood in solidarity with the…

Features

A beginner’s guide to witchcraft

Next year, Exeter University will offer an MA in Magic and Occult Science: the first of its kind in a…

Features

The sad death of the pony ride

Pony rides were once a staple of every village, church and primary-school fête. A brusque, horsey mother would swing you…

Features

Mind games: why AI must be regulated

During my time in No. 10 as one of Dominic Cummings’s ‘weirdos and misfits’, my team would often speak with…

Columnists

Columns

The Tory vote squeeze

When the cabinet gathered on Tuesday morning, the meeting started as a sombre affair. Just days before, the Conservatives had…

Columns

What Hamas promised to its electorate

Things you do not hear very often, number one: a pro-Palestinian protestor denouncing Hamas for the barbarity of its incursion…

The Spectator's Notes

My dinner with a glamorous Taiwanese MP

  Taipei   I arrive here shortly after Taiwan National Day, which is 10 October. The day might seem strangely…

Columns

Rishi’s smoking ban inspired me to light a cigarette

What has Rishi Sunak’s government achieved in its first year? The highlights include a renegotiated Brexit policy and setting more…

Columns

Does the Met know what jihad means?

Ever since the atrocities in Israel more than two weeks ago, I have had one main thought. Yes, Israel has…

Books

More from Books

In search of utopia: Chevengur, by Andrey Platonov, reviewed

After crossing the vast steppe, Sasha Dvanov reaches an isolated town where the communist ideal appears to have been achieved. But at what cost?

More from Books

The force of nature that drove Claude Monet

A compulsion to paint en plein air would remain with the great Impressionist for life, as well as a questing need to find new ways to express what he saw and felt

More from Books

Escape into the wild: Run to the Western Shore, by Tim Pears, reviewed

A chieftain’s daughter flees an arranged marriage with the Roman governor of Britain, enlisting the help of slave and risking both their lives

More from Books

Now imagine a white hole – a black hole’s time-reversed twin…

Just as you can enter a black hole without leaving it, you can exit a white hole without entering it – but first you must understand what black holes really are

More from Books

Ordinary women make just as thrilling history as great men

Philippa Gregory investigates the lives of English women over 900 years – in sickness, health, business, war, prayer and prostitution

More from Books

A Hindu Cromwell courteously decapitates hundreds of maharajas

Through a mix of charm, diplomacy and coercion, Sardar Patel, Nehru’s uncompromising deputy, ensured that 565 princely states vanished from the map of India in 1947

More from Books

Nina Stibbe’s eye for the absurd is as sharp as ever

Back in London after an absence of 20 years, she’s no longer a literary outsider – but she’s still an acute observer, relishing the foibles of everyone she meets

Lead book review

Was the French Revolution inevitable?

It was clear for decades in France that unrest was steadily building before public anger finally exploded in the spring of 1789, says Ruth Scurr

Arts

Australian Arts

A naive friend

John le Carré was one of the more extraordinary popular writers of the last half-century (and more) and part of…

Classical

The miracle of watching a great string quartet perform

Joseph Haydn, it’s generally agreed, invented the string quartet. And having done so, he re-invented it: again and again. Take…

Cinema

Basic, plodding and lacking any actual horror: Doctor Jekyll reviewed

Tis the season of horror, as it’s Halloween, which we celebrate in this house by turning off all the lights…

Television

Surprisingly addictive and heartwarming: Netflix’s Beckham reviewed

If you’re not remotely interested in football or celebrity, I recommend Netflix’s four-part documentary series Beckham. Yes, I know it’s…

Pop

The case against re-recording albums

In 2012, Jeff Lynne released Mr Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra. Except it wasn’t. It was…

Radio

I’m not convinced Thomas Heatherwick is the best person to be discussing boring buildings

Architects are often snobby about – and no doubt jealous of – the designer Thomas Heatherwick, who isn’t an actual…

Exhibitions

Why did this brilliant Irish artist fall off the radar?

Sir John Lavery has always had a place in Irish affections. His depiction of his wife, Hazel, as the mythical…

Radio

A Radio 3 doc that contains some of the best insults I’ve ever heard

A recent Sunday Feature on Radio 3 contained some of the best insults I have ever heard. Contributors to the…

Theatre

If only Caryl Churchill’s plays were as thrillingly macabre as her debut

The first play by the pioneering feminist Caryl Churchill has been revived at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Owners, originally staged…

Arts feature

No one should trust the camera in the age of AI

Bryan Appleyard on photographic manipulation, past and present

Life

Kiwi Life

Kiwi life

Elections are always hard fought. But for most New Zealanders to be so desperate to throw out Jacinda Ardern’s original…

Aussie Life

Language

The weather bureau tells us that we are now officially in an ‘El Niño event’ and, as a result we…

Real life

Brits are complex and prickly – I’m excited to get to Ireland

‘We’re in the living room with a roaring fire, there’s not a sound for miles, it’s wonderful,’ said the builder…

More from life

The death of royalty

The cohorts of Hamas have invaded my neighbourhood. I was walking my dog, Maxi, in the afterglow of a shower…

Food

‘They do better spaghetti bolognese in Hampstead for a tenner’: The Lobby at The Peninsula, reviewed

The Peninsula is a new hotel at Hyde Park Corner. It is part of the trend for absurd expense: rooms…

Spectator sport

It’s a blessing that England didn’t make the rugby World Cup final

In the days when Spitting Image was funny it featured a song called ‘I’ve Never Met A Nice South African’.…

More from life

Dark, bold and perfect for autumn: how to make the perfect honey cake

I did not plan to cook a loaf cake when I embarked on concocting a traditional honey cake recipe. The…

No sacred cows

Why I don’t trust the BBC’s Trusted News Initiative

You almost certainly haven’t heard of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), although you probably should have. It’s a BBC-led consortium…