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The Spectator

9 September 2023 Aus

Flight risk

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Flight risk

Seasoned air travellers are familiar with the sight of a swarm of masked and gloved cleaners waiting to rush on…

Australian Columnists

Australian Notes

New HRC madness

In Canberra a parliamentary committee is considering whether to recommend a huge transfer of power from the elected executive government…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Don’t lose the peace, Mr Dutton

Labor is entirely to blame for the Voice fiasco but the Libs will have to clean up the mess

Features Australia

Incredible claims

Chalmers must have his eyes on the Lodge rather than on our economic future

Features Australia

Uluru itself needs some truth-telliing

First comes the ‘Voice’, then the ‘Invoice’

Features Australia

Are the Wokerati winning?

14 October is a pivotal moment for Western civilisation

Features Australia

Silencing the song

Woke cancel culture threatens some of our greatest works of art

Features Australia

Arise the Left’s latest bunyip aristocracy

Labor’s plans to enshrine a new, elite upper class

Columnists

Columns

Does the public want reheated Blairism?

To understand the political journey of Sir Keir Starmer, look to Liz Kendall. This week the Blairite and one-time leadership…

Columns

Right-on Kew

We must all hurry down to the Temperate House at Kew Gardens next month to enjoy Queer Nature After Hours,…

Columns

The delicious schadenfreude of Burning Man

If any readers are having those September, back-to-work blues perhaps I might offer them a sure-fire palliative? Just go online…

Columns

Children need protection from adult madness

The Texas Supreme Court just upheld a state law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors, to explosive consternation from predictable…

Columns

Britain has an entitlement problem

An Institute for Fiscal Studies paper, published at the end of last month, makes grim reading. Through the prism of…

Books

More from Books

A labour of love

A 2023 book about a 1987 film set in 1969, in which multiple characters mourn the end of an era, told through interviews, memorabilia and testimonials from besotted fans

More from Books

Unfinished business in Berlin: The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron, reviewed

How it all began: Di Taverner, Service legend David Cartwright and the rest of the Slow Horses make themselves known to the reader in an origin story disguised as a follow-up

More from Books

Feeding frenzy: memories of a gourmand in Paris

In 1927, A.J. Liebling sailed from America to study medieval literature at the Sorbonne. Instead, he taught himself how to eat French food

More from Books

The woman who set our country in a roar

Such was the emotion Anne Boleyn inspired in Henry VIII. But before long that scalding love had turned to a brutalising hatred of his second wife, culminating in her bloody beheading

More from Books

Fish out of water

As a one-nation Tory, Rory Stewart was not a good fit in the party’s new incarnation. We discover how his desire to make the world a better place was always going to work against him

More from Books

Sinister science

Set in the near future, the novel examines what is necessary to make us human – while showcasing the base behaviour of those lucky enough to be born with the right genes

More from Books

A born rebel

Four days after she last saw her, Natasha Walter’s mother Ruth took her own life. The loss throws Natasha into a desperate search for meaning by examining Ruth’s peace-activist past and beyond

More from Books

The forgotten world of female espionage

Many thousands of women acted as messengers, radio operators and double agents behind enemy lines in both world wars. Here, these resilient and resolute pioneers are retrieved from the mists of history

Lead book review

The extraordinary life of 17th-century polymath Margaret Cavendish

Lucy Hughes-Hallett admires the brave and wayward Duchess of Newcastle, whose idiosyncratic writings astonished 17th-century English society

Arts

Australian Arts

Poets don’t stink

The Australian Book Review poetry prize is upon us again and it’s worth mentioning that the ABR editor Peter Rose,…

Exhibitions

Lyrical and dreamlike: A World of Private Mystery – British Neo-Romantics, at the Fry Art Gallery, reviewed

‘My daughter’s moving to Saffron Walden, away from all this,’ said the railway man at Stratford station, gesturing at the…

Theatre

Lacks any air of mystery, foreboding or darkness: Macbeth, at the Globe, reviewed

Macbeth at the Globe wants to put us at our ease and make us feel comfortable with the play’s arcane…

The Listener

The best new album I’ve heard this year: Being Dead’s When Horses Would Run reviewed

Grade: A– The point of a sudden, abrupt change in the time signature and instrumentation of a song is to…

Television

Subtle, psychologically twisty drama: BBC3’s Bad Behaviour reviewed

Bad Behaviour is a decidedly solemn new Australian drama series with plenty to be solemn about. It was billed in…

Pop

The Strokes are always terrible – why do I keep going back to see them?

Quite when the concept of coolness became a thing is uncertain, even to etymologists. As early as 1884, an academic…

Classical

Every crumb of Kurtag’s music is a feast: Endgame, at the Proms, reviewed

The fun starts early in Beckett’s Endgame. Within minutes of opening his mouth, blind bully Hamm decides to starve his…

Classical

A euphoric meat-and-two-veg programme: Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/Paavo Jarvi, at the Proms, reviewed

We used to call it a ‘meat and two veg’ programme, back in my concert planning days: the reliable set…

Cinema

The best drama without any drama that you’ll see: Past Lives reviewed

Past Lives is an exquisite film made with great precision and care about what could have been, even if what…

Arts feature

‘People thought I was insane’: Graham Nash on the birth of Crosby, Stills and Nash

Adam Sweeting talks to Graham Nash about Joni Mitchell, the Hollies and the birth of Crosby, Stills and Nash in the Laurel Canyon idyll of the 1960s

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie life

Presumably, you don’t get to become head of football’s governing body in a football-mad country like Spain without putting in…

Aussie Life

Language

Here’s a brand new Australian political expression I’ve just coined: ‘cane toad politics’. I expect it to take its place…

Drink

A perfect slice of Calabria

The Romans wrote the history, or at least the myths. But long before Romulus murdered Remus, the Mediterranean – the…

The Wiki Man

What a full English breakfast can tell us about the state of the NHS

Among devotees of the full English breakfast, few things polarise more than the inclusion of baked beans. Some people are…

No sacred cows

Could I be pregnant?

At the age of 59 I thought it was time to get my body thoroughly examined. So last week I…

The turf

The charm of Carmel races

Racing at Cartmel probably began in the 15th century when Brother John wagered a mug of ale with Brother Cain…

Real life

Concrete, marmite and jam: the fight against Ulez

‘We’re renegades now. We’re outlaws. Bandits.’ This was my assessment as the builder boyfriend pulled up outside the house in…