The Spectator
Australia
Castrating Australia
Within this week’s issue we present a number of articles and different points of view surrounding the invasion of Ukraine,…
Australian Features
Wokeness in action
The policies of Team Biden have proved disastrous. Who’d’ve guessed?
Features
In Japan, being a token westerner is big business
How to make money as a token westerner in Japan
Why are so many classic British brands going downmarket?
Why are so many classic British brands going downmarket?
Germany’s attitude to Russia is changing. Does it go far enough?
Germany’s attitude to Russia is changing fast
Putin’s rage: the Russian President won’t be easy to topple
Despite western hopes, the Russian President won’t be easy to topple
The prickly truth: hedgehogs face a struggle to survive
No wild animal is closer to the hearts of the British than the hedgehog. In poll after poll, it has…
The Week
Does Putin pass Aristotle’s tyrant test?
Is Putin a tyrant? Aristotle (384-322 bc) might well have thought so. Seeing the turannos as a deviant type of…
What does it mean to go ‘full tonto’?
The wild one Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said that Vladimir Putin had gone ‘full tonto’. The word tonto is used…
In Lviv, the mood is inspiring – and fanatical
Lviv, Ukraine On the Ukrainian side of the Polish border, near a place called Shehyni where the refugee crisis…
Britain must give Ukrainians an unconditional right to asylum
During the Cold War, any citizen of a Soviet bloc country who made it to Britain and claimed asylum was…
Letters: How the UK should respond to Russia
Soft options Sir: In relation to strengthening the impact of the Russian sanctions package (‘Tsar Vladimir’, 26 February), please may…
Portrait of the week: Russia bombs Ukraine, MPs get a pay rise and Tube staff strike
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia: ‘Never in all my study or…
Columnists
The free world’s new reality
We are about to see brutality in Europe on a scalethat will be almost beyond our comprehension. Russia is turning…
The true meaning of 'emergency'
Much attention has been paid to how Vladimir Putin has learnt from western weakness over his earlier invasions, including into…
Has Putin saved Boris?
It was with some relief that I heard that Labour’s Diane Abbott was opposed to the Russian invasion of Croatia,…
What the right gets wrong about Putin
A fracture on the international right may seem small fry given everything that is going on right now. But it…
I’ve found a little Eden in London
I’m not one of life’s early risers but an exception had to be made on Wednesday last week. In an…
The return of Actual Badness
In the spring of 2020, I advanced an abnormally hopeful proposition: that one blessing that might arise from a pandemic…
At least BP and Shell tried to teach Russia true capitalism
BP will offload the 20 per cent stake in Rosneft, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant, that is the residue of 25…
Books
What the Anglo-Saxons made of 1066 and all that followed
By any yardstick, the Norman Conquest was a ghastly business. Within two decades, the English aristocracy had been more than…
Sister, where are you? – Clover Stroud mourns her beloved sibling
‘CERTIFICATE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY,’ the freshly issued death certificate read. In the craziness and shock of grief for…
The making of a poet: Mother’s Boy, by Patrick Gale, reviewed
Charles Causley was a poet’s poet. Both Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin considered him the finest candidate for the laureateship,…
Troubles of the past: The Slowworm’s Song, by Andrew Miller, reviewed
Andrew Miller specialises in characters who are lost, often struggling to deal with the burden of failure. They don’t come…
TB is back with a vengeance
If you were a teenager before 2005, one reminder of tuberculosis in British life is that small circular scar on…
Julie Burchill has found a new way to provoke: she’s turned sincere
The greatest ever social media spat took place before the first tweet was sent, and was conducted via fax, which…
The torment of mentoring spoilt rich kids
For 20 years of my adult life, I moonlighted as a private tutor. After a full day in the office…
The fuss over Mary Seacole’s statue has obscured the real person
Mary Seacole may not have qualified as a nurse in the modern sense, but British troops benefited greatly from her healing skills, says Andrew Lycett
Arts
Tinkling irrevelancies?
So Opera Australia is in quest of a new artistic director to replace Lyndon Terracini. It’s a good moment to…
Paul Bettany's Warhol is a tour de force: The Collaboration, at the Young Vic, reviewed
The Collaboration is set in the 1980s when Andy Warhol teamed up with the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat to create bad…
Too neat but it has hooks aplenty: Avril Lavigne's Love Sux reviewed
Grade: B Yay, life just gets better and better. World War Three and now this. More petulant popcorn pre-school punk…
Beautiful and revealing: The Three Pietàs of Michelangelo, at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, reviewed
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
Enthralling and unusual – even if you don't care about Kanye: Netflix's Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy reviewed
The most disappointing pop performance I’ve ever seen – and in the course of my 15-odd years as a music…
Humourless and stale: The Batman reviewed
The latest Batman film, The Batman, may be a reboot, or even a reboot of a rebooted reboot that’s been…
The genius of Iannis Xenakis
This year is the centenary of the birth of Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer-architect who called himself an ancient Greek…
Some of the best social commentary around: Celebrity Book Club with Steven & Lily reviewed
When I was ten years old I had a babysitter who was a beautiful graduate student at an Ivy League…
Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Stuart Jeffries on Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Life
Aussie Life
I’m thinking about acquiring a drug habit. As a New South Wales Seniors Card carrier I may have left it…
Aussie Language
We are used to words being banned – but now it seems the word police are coming for the word…
My oncologist has a new weapon in his arsenal
‘We’re at war!’ said the taxi man as I installed myself for the long drive to Marseille. I put a…
Russia in check
The Champions League final has been moved from St Petersburg to Paris and the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi cancelled.…
The politics of trees
Trees glorious trees. People can’t get enough of them. They don’t want to take care of trees, they just want…
The complicated business of swearing in Ukrainian
‘This will interest you,’ said my husband, looking up from the smeared screen of his telephone. For once he was…
Spectator competition winners: poems about literary feuds
In Competition No. 3238, you were invited to submit a poem about a literary feud. Wallace Stevens’s 1936 fisticuffs with…
How to post a parcel without leaving your house
Here’s a useful tip. Go to the Royal Mail websiteand you can ask your postman to collect letters or parcels…
Bridge | 5 March 2022
Few things in life compare to the joy of playing bridge, but if I rack my brain I can think…
The story of Tuscany’s all-female winery
The inhabitants of Tuscany and Umbria can claim to be the most civilised beings on the planet, even exceeding the…
Dear Mary: How do I stop my new friend leaving me broke?
Q. Recently I started hanging out with a new friend. We are both in our twenties, single, and usually go…
Nuclear war, magic mushrooms and a teenage trip I’ll never forget
Vladimir Putin’s decision on Sunday to put his ‘deterrence forces’ – code for nuclear weapons – in a high state…
2542: Wider II - solution
The unclued lights and COMPOSERS (35A) are RIBBONS/Gibbons (1A), MAILER/Mahler (7), RAMEAN/Rameau (25), WANTON/Walton (26A), DELICES/Delibes (46), RAVENER/Tavener (1D), BELLING/Bellini…
2545: With a twist
41 (four words) suggests the other unclued lights – which are individual examples (not group names) of a kind –…
No. 692
White to play and win. A gem discovered by the Ukrainian composer Vladislav Tarasiuk with Israeli composer Amatzia Avni. How…
My top tips for Cheltenham Festival
Even when the authorities were refusing Milton Harris the right to renew his training licence after he got his finances…
St Moritz is unique among ski resorts
St Moritz Once upon a time, not that long ago, St Moritz was the world’s greatest resort, an exclusive winter…