coronavirus
Looking at Barnett Freedman makes me weep at the government's dismal graphics
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
I’ve started a dating site for lockdown sceptics
I started a dating site last Sunday. Not words I ever thought I’d write, but I’ve become a kind of…
How hot does a ‘heatwave’ have to be?
Some like it hot Are heatwaves becoming a devalued currency? Last year the Met Office defined a heatwave as three…
In the race to recovery, Britain is losing
Britain is losing the race to recovery
The New Normal Festival shows how theatre could return
So the madness continues. Planes full of passengers are going everywhere. Theatres full of ghosts are going bust. My first…
The dismal rise of the modern elopement
I didn’t realise how attached I was to the traditional British wedding — the whole messy, pricey, drunken business —…
Exclusive: half of Americans support Trump bypassing Congress for COVID relief
More than half of registered voters support President Trump using executive action to bypass Congress and extend coronavirus relief measures,…
Cuomo’s nursing home death blame game
A major Associated Press report this week dove into New York’s nursing home COVID-19 death count and found the numbers…
How Covid spread in Sweden's care homes
Why did Covid prove so lethal in care homes? Between 2 March and 12 June, there were 66,112 deaths of…
Why are black Americans likelier to die of COVID than Latinos?
Only part of the dramatic racial differences in age-adjusted COVID-19 death rates can be explained by racial differences. The remainder reflects a substantially lower black…
What we can learn from Sweden
It is a particular pleasure to be returning to the columns of The Spectator, more than half a century after…
The difference between American and French wine-drinkers
Is it safe to visit the continent? On the one hand, abroad is likely to be less crowded this August…
Economies run on confidence – the government mustn’t undermine it
Throughout the past few months the government has appeared to face an unenviable choice between saving lives and saving livelihoods.…
Why must we ‘live with’ coronavirus?
T.S. Eliot adopted a method of criticism that I am not aware of any other writer using: he imagined what…
Never has a virus been so oversold
There’s nothing unprecedented about Covid-19 itself. The equally novel, equally infectious Asian flu of 1957 had commensurate fatalities in Britain:…
Portrait of the week: Local lockdowns, busy beaches and an explosion in Beirut
Home Some 2.7 million people in Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, where many Muslims live, were…
From riveting Hitchockian melodrama to bigoted drivel: BBC’s Unprecedented reviewed
Back to the West End at last. After a four- month lay-off, I grabbed the first available chance to catch…
Letters: How to slim down the nation
Peer review Sir: A neat solution to the levels of inactivity of some members of the House of Lords (‘Peer…
Is our test-and-trace system ready to stop a second spike?
Is our test-and-trace system ready?
How busy have restaurants been this summer?
The other Argos The Argos catalogue, known as the ‘Book of Dreams’, is no longer to appear in printed form.…
Why should anyone be forced to shield?
The best way (and with politicians sometimes the only way) to know whether people are aware they’ve made a mistake…
London in limbo: can the capital survive this crisis?
The capital is the motor of Britain’s economy. It needs to get moving again
Has Sweden been vindicated?
Sweden has released growth figures for the second quarter – a contraction of 8.6 per cent – and two narratives…
Has Trump’s Covid-19 response really been so dire?
The sight of Donald Trump fumbling with charts during his interview on HBO this Monday has provided much ammunition for…
Where the Arlington sidewalk ends
Watch out, Gretchen Whitmer! The queen of draconian and idiotic coronavirus restrictions is getting a run for her money thanks…
